Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes the:

(a) Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) created under the Howard Government' s industrial relations legislation unfairly targets workers in the construction industry; and

(b) Government believes the current ABCC should be abolished and replaced with a new inspectorate that is part of the Fair Work Australia system; and

(2) calls on all m embers to support the abolition of the ABCC to restore fairness in the construction industry for workers and employers.

The Australian Building and Construction Commission is a regulator that was conceived as part of the legislative malice that the previous Howard government exhibited to organised labour and to the working men and women of this country. It is a malice that we have seen over 100 years. We saw it in the 1890s, in the shearers' strikes; we saw it in the 1930s, in the railway strikes that brought Ben Chifley to this parliament; we saw it in Mudginberri and the disputes of the eighties; and we saw it on the docks with the dogs and balaclavas and the illegal sacking of Australians simply for being members of a union.

We see this malice towards the working men and women in the construction industry—900,000 people singled out for special observance under special powers and special prosecution with special penalties. All of this is simply because they want to be part of a union and want to organise and exert their rights at work. The ABCC is the last remaining edifice in the legislative malice that was Work Choices and the 1998 Workplace Relations Act. The then government sought to insert into Australian law all of the unfairness and viciousness that they had in their hearts for organised labour.

The building industry is at the heart of our economy. It is an industry that is robust, diverse and at times troubled. There are many examples of this. I am sure members opposite will make plenty of remarks and observations about the conduct of unions and workers. But we know this is an industry that has huge problems with sham contracting, phoenix companies, unpaid entitlements and bills to other firms. We know it is an industry with a problem with the employment of illegal workers.

The Sydney Morning Herald on 26 June 2011 observed the death of a Mr Hwang who had been working illegally in Australia since 1998 and who had died of a respiratory illness. He died a pauper. He was an illegal worker in the tiling industry and one of many in that industry who are subject to those conditions. He had never been on an employer's books and was never paid any superannuation. On the website Adelaide Now on 9 March 2011 was the headline 'Dodgy builders "out of control"', and the story referred to underpaid construction workers, many of them illegal workers, flooding into South Australia's construction industry. It outlined the cases of workers on the SAPOL building site who were owed $200,000 in wages by a subcontractor who had fled the country. There were individuals there who were owed $11,000—one was owed $18,000—and these are just some of the examples of workers in this industry who have been ripped off, underpaid and undocumented and who have taken Australian jobs.

When we look at how the ABCC has performed and what it has done about problems such as these, we see they have received $182 million over the last few years and have had exactly five employer prosecutions. There were zero in 2006, zero in 2007, zero in 2009 and zero in 2010. Less than five per cent of all prosecutions were of employers. These were quiet years for the ABCC. This was because this regulator is myopic and blinkered. It was conceived in malice—that is why it has to go.

It is a regulator that has not fairly applied the rule of law to this industry. It has not put in place safeguards to protect civil liberties or workers. It has not looked to be a fair regulator for the Australian people, and that is why we look forward to it being replaced by a regulator that will put at its heart the rule of law, will protect civil liberties such as the right to a lawyer and will enshrine in legislation a sunset clause to protect Australians from its extraordinary powers. This is a regulator that was born of malice, and it must be replaced by a regulator that is born of fairness.

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