House debates

Wednesday, 31 July 2019

Bills

Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill 2019

11:36 am

Photo of Rebekha SharkieRebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Hansard source

I won't take up much of the chamber's time here today. The final report of the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption was a damning indictment on the conduct of senior union members and the culture of self-interest that flourished under their watch. The Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill 2019 is in part a response to recommendations made by the royal commission and purports to effectively deal with registered organisations that are dysfunctional or are not serving in the interests of their members. It does so by expanding the grounds for disqualification from office for the officials of registered organisations, expanding the grounds for cancelling the registration of registered organisations, adding a public interest test to amalgamations of registered organisations and allowing dysfunctional registered organisations to be subject to government intervention. The government says this bill strikes the appropriate balance, ensuring that registered organisations and their officers act with integrity and obey the law without unduly restricting the vast majority of organisations that do the right thing and diligently represent their members and act in their best interests.

The bill has been referred to the Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee, with a final report due late October this year. My Senate colleagues and I will closely follow the committee's process and consider the recommendations that arise from that Senate committee.

We are particularly concerned by the provision in the bill that gives the minister a power to lodge an application to deregister a union or union official. It may be that safeguards should be in place to ensure that this power is not exploited for political purposes. Centre Alliance will consider the recommendations of the committee through the lens of the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption in which Justice Dyson Heydon QC wrote in his final report:

It is difficult to overstate the importance of a strong, efficient and focussed committee of management for the proper governance of a union. The committee of management is the body which on a monthly basis needs to be questioning, checking and, if necessary, challenging accounting records and resolutions promulgated by the officials at the unions. The committee of management is perhaps the most important safeguard for ensuring that members' money is deployed properly. A position on a committee of management is not a position to be taken lightly. Its members must learn to use two words more. One is 'Why?' the other is 'No'.

That statement bears a striking resemblance to those of another eminent jurist the Hon. Kenneth Hayne AC QC in the final report of the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry:

There can be no doubt that the primary responsibility for misconduct in the financial services industry lies with the entities concerned and those who managed and controlled those entities: their boards and senior management.

Nothing that is said in this report should be understood as diminishing that responsibility. Everything that is said in this report is to be understood in the light of that one undeniable fact, and that is that those who engaged in misconduct are responsible for what they did and for the consequences that followed. It is the entities, their boards and their senior executives who bear primary responsibility for what has happened. Close attention must be given to their culture, their governance and their remuneration practices. Clearly, unions aren't the only organisations that require urgent legislative action to hold their leaders to account.

My qualified support for this bill in this House is not a comment on the merits of the union movement or on the actions of individual union members. Centre Alliance is not yet satisfied that the government has taken all the reasonable steps to protect the public from the type of behaviour detailed in both the royal commission into trade unions and the royal commission into financial services.

This bill, I believe, is an improvement on the 2017 version. However, as I mentioned, my Centre Alliance colleagues and I will continue to talk with government and stakeholders to ensure that the government implements a measured and proportionate response to both royal commissions.

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