Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the minister. Just turning to a more substantial matter in so far as public policy is concerned: today the House passed the registered organisation legislation, or proposed legislation, and the opposition moved some significant amendments to that bill. In December last year, the Labor leader and I announced a suite of reforms in relation to registered organisations, and those announcements informed the amendments that we foreshadowed today.

Unfortunately, given the procedural motion supported by the government, there was not an opportunity for many members to contribute and there was no opportunity for me, in consideration in detail, to ask the government the questions in relation to the amendments that we were looking to move. So, Mr Deputy Speaker Buchholz, I just want to touch on them, if I could go through the more important amendments proposed. Firstly, the federal opposition believe that we can support a new way of regulating registered organisations in so far as serious breaches are concerned. We have suggested that, rather than establish a separate commission to regulate registered organisations, we believe that ASIC, a mature and significant regulator, would be better charged with the responsibility to regulate the conduct of officers of registered organisations. For that reason, we propose that rather than the so-called ROC being established, we would rather see ASIC be the regulator. We believe it is likely a mature regulator that is highly respected in the community that currently regulates and examines whether in fact there is misconduct by companies is better placed to also regulate employer bodies and unions.

For many years now, the government have been saying—rhetorically, at least—that they want the same set of laws and forms of regulations that apply to companies to apply to registered organisations. In fact, I have heard many government members rhetorically argue that that should be the case. How could there be a better way of ensuring equality before the law, if you like, than having the same regulator regulate registered organisations that regulates companies? We also believe that it is far less likely that any government—this one or any future government—would interfere with the running of ASIC in the way in which they may interfere with this smaller body that is being proposed by the government.

So we would like to hear from the government as to whether they are seriously entertaining that amendment and whether, in fact, they can see the merits in allowing that an existing regulator that has been around for a very long time and that has a corporate memory in dealing with such matters could be the better regulator, as opposed to setting up an entirely new bureaucracy to deal with the regulation of registered organisations. That is one point.

I also ask the minister about some of the proposed amendments that we will be making when the Senate next sits. We ask whether the government would consider the whistleblower protections that we have proposed? We believe that there should be greater levels of support for whistleblowers in registered organisations. If we are going to reduce the likelihood of corruption occurring, we should enshrine the principle of protection and it should be afforded to whistleblowers. We ask the government to seriously entertain that proposition. We would like at least a preliminary response by the minister, if at all possible.

We would also like to see auditors held to a higher level of accountability in relation to their conduct. We want to make sure that they are reporting any misconduct and they are not in any way complicit. We would ask the minister to consider that.

Finally, we would like to know whether the government would seriously entertain reducing the disclosure threshold for donations, not only for registered organisation candidates but for candidates for federal elections.

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