Gai Brodtmann (Canberra, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

In my first speech in this place I said, 'History shows us that if work is to be dignified workers need advocates, because workers' rights did not fall from the sky.' History shows that, without unions, workers were broken in what William Blake called dark satanic mills. He understood that change would not come without a fight, and the best weapon in the fight for workers' rights is the trade union. This is why I am proud that the Labor Party was born in the fires of the union movement and fashioned on its anvils. It is something we should never seek to hide and something we should be proud of. Since I left high school, unions have protected me at work.

In that first speech, I also made a promise. I said that I would never forget what the unions have done for this country and that as long as I am here I will staunchly defend their right to defend their members. In rising today to speak against this legislation—the Building and Construction Industry (Improving Productivity) Bill 2013 and the Building and Construction Industry (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2013—I am honouring that promise. The bill seeks to re-establish the Australian Building and Construction Commission. The ABCC was created in 2005 to investigate breaches of and to enforce federal industrial law in the building and construction industry. Labor opposes this legislation, which forces a return to the draconian ABCC, which is based on flawed modelling and whose proposed powers are extreme and unnecessary and compromise civil liberties. The bill means that the ABCC, if re-established, will have coercive powers that will compel ordinary workers to be subject to secret interviews, to be denied legal representation and to be threatened with imprisonment if the person subject to such coercive powers refuses to cooperate. The powers are excessive, undemocratic and unwarranted. As many of my colleague have pointed out before me, they are Orwellian, and not what Australians expect of our government in our democratic, 21st century society.

The bill extends the reach of the ABCC into picketing, offshore construction and the transport and supply of goods to building sites. The new powers aimed at stopping pickets include a 'reverse onus', requiring individuals to prove they were not motivated by industrial objectives to escape the maximum $34,000 penalty. The bill will extend the ABCC's jurisdiction offshore, to as far as Australia's exclusive economic zone or waters above the continental shelf. More significantly, it will encompass the transport or supply of goods to building sites, including resource platforms.

Prior to the election, those opposite promised that if they were elected they would not go back to the extreme measures of the Howard-era Work Choices industrial relations policies. They made this promise because they had to; they knew that the Australian people simply would not vote for them otherwise. They knew that the Australian people remembered that it was the now Prime Minister who in 2001, as Minister for Workplace Relations, called for the Cole royal commission into supposed criminality, fraud and corruption within the building and construction industry. However, after 18 months and $66 million of taxpayers' money, the commission failed to produce one single criminal conviction—because, as Labor asserted at the time and has continued to assert, the investigation of crime is a matter for the police.

Yet here we are, still in early days of 44th Parliament, and already those opposite are trying to strip away the rights of Australian workers, are trying to introduce Work Choices in a poor guise. And, to be fair, these bills are not exactly like Work Choices; no, the coalition has learnt something from its past. It has learnt that Australians are smart and will not stand for the deprivation of workers' rights. So the coalition is taking a different approach. Unlike Work Choices, which deprived workers of their rights across every industry, the coalition is now stripping away workers' rights one industry at a time, starting with the construction industry. Perhaps they think that if they remove workers' rights one industry at a time the Australian people will not notice—but they are wrong.

The rationale of those opposite for singling out one industry with special laws is flimsy at best. The ABCC's proposed powers are extreme and unnecessary and compromise civil liberties. If passed, this bill will mean that there will be restrictions on freedom to gather. It will allow self-incrimination and a reverse onus of proof. There will be no presumption of innocence; there will be intervention by government—by this government, the very government that has spent much of its first 100 days talking about the need to get government out of business and to cut government regulation and red tape.

And what of our international obligations? Now, I know those opposite have a great disdain for multilateralism, and they are not afraid to show it. But this is just going too far. As my colleagues have pointed out, the former Building and Construction Industry Improvement Act 2005 was founded by the United Nations International Labour Organisation to breach Australia's international obligations. It was in breach of our obligations as a member state and as a signatory to the    Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise Convention of 1947, the Right to Organise and Collective Bargaining Convention of 1949, and the Labour Inspection Convention of 1947. That act was found by the ILO supervisory bodies to breach Australia's international obligations in that it exposed building industry employees to penalties for taking industrial action in a wider range of circumstances than other employees, virtually rendering all forms of industrial action in the building and construction sector unlawful. There was an imposition of penalties and sanctions upon workers and unions that engaged in unlawful industrial action that was significantly higher than imposed on workers in other sectors. There were provisions in the act—

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