Luke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Maribyrnong. There was about $850,000. We know that right around the country the Labor Party, both federally and in every state, has received some $100 million since 2017. This relationship that the Labor Party has with the CFMEU is costing the people in my electorate. We're in the middle of a housing crisis and everything is costing more because of the deals that the CFMEU does.

I was speaking to a tier 1 builder, and they told me that every day there was coercive control. The Labor Party talk about coercive control in relationships and how bad it is. If I was an employer using coercive control on my staff I would probably be in the slammer, but every day the CFMEU comes into workplaces around this country and coercive control takes place. They are like a militia.

Tier 1 builders are controlled 100 per cent under CFMEU agreements, and the rest of the industry isn't. The CFMEU want only their members on the construction site. So if they are not CFMEU—even if they're a member of another union—they will just down tools. What happens if the builder says, 'We're allowing someone who's not a CFMEU member on,' or the builder says, 'We're not going to allow CFMEU members to go and hand out for the Labor Party'—which is what they did at the last election. They all left their sites; I know that it happened in Brisbane. The builder still paid them—that is, the taxpayer still paid them, because most of these are state government jobs.

And what would happen? Those workers would be in the shed, and they'd sit there for hours with excuses like, 'The pie warmers aren't hot enough' or 'The site's too dusty' or 'We're getting wet from the rain when we're walking between the lunch room and going to the job site.' Or it's the heat, humidity or high wind. There are plenty of reasons to stop work: 'There's a bar of reo. The end's gone off of it. That's dangerous! Quick, into the shed.' This happens all the time.

In the private sector, if they're building houses in my electorate at Newport or in North Lakes, guess what: the builder doesn't get paid. But these guys are still getting paid all the time, and the Labor Party knows about it. And what's happening? The money that the Labor Party has received—the first order of business was to abolish the Australian Building and Construction Commission. I've been told that under the ABCC productivity was better. We know that, under this Prime Minister, it's fallen by almost six per cent. The watchdog at least was there; there was a policeman on the beat. There has been a definite change in behaviour from CFMEU officials since the Albanese Labor government were elected. They knew that they were protected by the Labor Party. They changed the legislation that they brought in.

Now, the relationship between the CFMEU and Labor is hurting mums and dads and my children. The young people here who serve in this place and right around the country or who are at uni now are going to pay more for housing in the future—30 per cent more. So it's a double whammy. Wages are higher under the CFMEU's EBAs, which the Labor Party allows. Productivity is lower, and everyone pays more in the middle of a housing crisis. It's an absolute joke. It's not good enough.

In places like Queensland, where we have the Olympics in eight years, will any of this infrastructure be ready? Meanwhile, Labor Party politicians in this federal government and right around the country turn a blind eye to this every day, and now they're guillotining debate on this. It's completely outrageous.

See this speech in context