Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

You mention the Wheat Board. We will not start about the Wheat Board, because let me tell you that has been an absolute disaster. You can speak to any wheat grower in my electorate of Riverina and they will tell you how bad the wheat situation is going following deregulation. I would not start on that if I were you.

If you want to take a sneak peek at what is about to be unleashed, have a look at the Wonthaggi desalination plant in Victoria. I am a little bit dubious about desalination plants at the best of times, because we have more water than we need, but we tend to want to turn sea water back into fresh water so we can use it. Every time I go to Sydney it rains, but we have no policies to build new dams. Every time I go to Sydney it rains, it pours out to the ocean, and at the desalination plant put there at the behest of the Labor government they try to turn it back into useable water. Go-slows at Wonthaggi desalination plant have delayed the project by up to four months. It lost 193 days due to industrial action—this was an example that the Cole royal commission came up with. This is what happens when the cop on the beat is not doing his job or does not have the powers to be able to do his job. Imagine this replicated right across the country.

Regional Australia is doing it tough enough, and builders in regional Australia are doing it tough enough, because investment is on hold. In the city of Griffith in my electorate of Riverina, since the Murray-Darling Basin Authority brought out its infamous and ill-fated guide to the Basin Plan, a company which had sold 62 homes in the 12 months leading up to the release of that report in October 2010 has not sold or built one house since. The builders of that company have had either to shift or to move town, or they are just out of a job.

It is tough enough for the building industry, and this is replicated right across regional Australia, yet builders in those towns who are actually working on homes and buildings for businesses are once more going to be at the behest of unions. They are going to be at the behest of union bosses—these thugs who are going to come onto their worksites and tell them what to do and how to do it. There will be stop work meetings, and you can see it happening all over again. The CFMEU will be up to its old tricks, with a weakened regulator still in place. Just imagine what is going to happen on building sites when the construction police tie up the hands of employers and companies to the point where it will be, 'Hammers and screwdrivers down!' We are going to be seeing union thuggery at its worst in this country again.

This bill is a ploy by the Prime Minister to bring the unions and the Labor Left onside to save her leadership—nothing more, nothing less. Employers right across my electorate of Riverina are worried about this. They have written letters to me. Workers are going to be worried about it, too—

Mr Neumann interjecting—

You can complain all you like, but workers are worried about it, too. Workers in regional Australia just want a job. They just want a job as an apprentice, they just want a job on a working site, and they want to be paid fairly. They want fair conditions. They want safe conditions. That is imperative, and that is possible under the current commission. What they do not want is to always be told to put down tools. They do not want some union thug telling them that they cannot do this and they cannot do that.

In most places, as even the member for Shortland admitted, many employers are very good employers in very good companies. A lot of them are family owned and they treat their workers like their own. You are going to get bad workers in any environment, and bad employers too—that is just the nature of the beast—but the ABCC is doing its job. It is doing a good regulatory job and it is stopping those unions from having their way with companies, bringing down productivity and putting in place negative factors which would stop otherwise reputable companies and employers from hiring people.

That is why the coalition is dead against the Building and Construction Industry Improvement Amendment (Transition to Fair Work) Bill 2011. Even the wording of the bill is a little bit like the Fairer Private Health Insurance Incentives Bill this morning, with the word 'fairness' in it. Here we have the word 'improvement' and the phrase 'transition to fair work' in the name of the bill. It is almost editorialising at its worst. That bill was not about fairness in private health insurance, just like this bill is not about improvement. This is a bill which shows that the Prime Minister is beholden to the Greens. It shows that the Prime Minister is beholden to the unions, who we know pay her way and pay Labor's way to keeping their flimsy government intact.

This bill is not in the national interest. If it were in the national interest, then it would have been done many years ago. It is not in the national interest; it is only in the unions' interest. That is why the coalition opposes the bill and that is why it should not be passed.

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