Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for his question. This week the government has again delivered important economic reforms. Only months into the 45th Parliament we are delivering on our commitments—commitments that I remind the Leader of the Opposition were endorsed by the Australian people at the election.

Yesterday, the parliament passed our superannuation reforms, securing $6 billion in gross savings. Those changes make the superannuation system fairer and more sustainable for all Australians. These were substantial, important reforms that we took to the election. We won, and they have now been passed by the parliament. We have delivered around $20 billion in gross budget repair and we have delivered tax cuts for half a million middle-income Australians.

These reforms help ensure that we remain the prosperous, generous, fair, First World economy which can afford a generous social welfare safety net; a country where essential services—education, health care and infrastructure—are well funded and accessible for all Australians. However, if we want to continue doing that, we cannot fall into the complacency that the Labor Party is trapped in. We need to continue that strong economic reform.

One of the key elements in economic reform is restoring the rule of law to the industrial relations sphere—to the construction sector; to the unions—and this week the Senate passed the registered organisations bill. This is a critical reform, one the Labor Party opposed, root and branch, and yet all it has sought to do, and all it now will do, is ensure that union officials have the same obligations of accountability, transparency, integrity—the same duties—to their members, as company directors have to their shareholders. It will be harder for the Kathy Jacksons and the Craig Thomsons to rip their members off. It will be a lot harder for them to get away with it and, when they get caught, the penalties will be much heavier. This is a reform that is manifestly in the interests of the workers of Australia.

But there is one more reform in this sphere that we are asking the opposition to support: restore the Australian Building and Construction Commission. How much more evidence of thuggery and of illegality, how many more breaches of the law and how many more fines that are brushed off like parking tickets do we have to bear before the opposition recognises that Australia must be governed by the rule of law?

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