Zoe McKenzie (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the government's Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Building Cooperative Workplaces No. 1) Bill 2026. The bill amends the now tome-like Fair Work Act 2009, the Independent Contractors Act 2006 and the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Act 2009. Schedule 1 parts 5 to 8 seek to make it easier for the Fair Work Commission to determine or dismiss applications to the commission. The president of the commission, as well as near any practitioner in this area, will tell you that the commission has been inundated with applications composed by generative AI, like ChatGPT or Claude. Earlier this year, Justice Adam Hatcher, president of the commission, announced that, by the end of the financial year, the commission's total workload will have increased by over 70 per cent in the space of three years and that this is principally being caused by the increasing use of AI tools by potential litigants. In testimony before senate estimates recently, representatives of the commission advised that early indications are that around 40 per cent to 50 per cent of people were telling them that AI had been used to make an application to the commission.

This bill expands the commission's capacity to dismiss applications that are, in their view, frivolous, vexatious or lacking reasonable prospects of success and empowers the commission to make orders restricting vexatious litigants from filing further applications without permission. Certain matters will now be able to be determined on the papers by consent, without the need for hearings or conferences.

In my consultation since taking on the role as shadow assistant minister for industrial relations, I have met widely with stakeholders across the spectrum of IR interests, from the president of the commission to daily practitioners before the commission. I have been somewhat taken aback by the uniformity in views that something must be done about the avalanche of cases being brought before the commission, well written, yes, but often riddled with false facts or assertions rather than borne out in the applicant's actual workplace experience. Given this change in the nature of the work, as well as the constrained resources of the commission, these changes all seem sensible. We hope it will do something to produce a more manageable workload at the commission while retaining applicants' and respondents' rights for proper consideration of workplace matters and a right to be heard, in respect of cases which should be heard.

A second measure to streamline the work of the commission is to enable it to deal with matters involving an alleged dismissal without first having to determine whether an actual dismissal has occurred. This is in response to the case of Coles Supply Chain v Milford back in 2020, which has effectively required the commission to determine if a dismissal had occurred as a threshold issue, thereby increasing the commission's workload before the somewhat preliminary processes of conciliation and mediation could begin. The bill therefore addresses an issue which, according to its own testimony, the commission has been raising with this Albanese government for some three years. These are reasonably sensible reforms, which the coalition supports.

This brings me to the part of the bill which the coalition cannot and will not support, which goes to the Commonwealth preferencing employers with enterprise agreements in relation to grants, procurements or other contractual purposes. Here is where the devil is to be found in the detail, hidden behind a cloak of Orwellian language, such as 'preference enterprise agreements negotiated in good faith and genuinely agreed' or 'support enterprise bargaining that promotes job security and fair conditions'.

I have found myself in recent months needing to go back to Orwell's 1984 and the principles of newspeak that were espoused in it. You might remember that newspeak was the language of Oceania, the totalitarian superstate invented to meet the needs of English socialism, known in the book as Ingsoc. Newspeak is a controlled language with a simplified grammar and restricted vocabulary so as to minimise critical thinking and critique and, indeed, to deny the neurological path to criticism itself. In Orwell's appendix to 1984, when commenting on the methodology of newspeak, he described it as follows:

Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meanings and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods.

The appendix goes on to say:

It was expected that Newspeak would have finally superseded Oldspeak (or Standard English, as we should call it) by about the year 2050.

With the members for Rankin and Kingston in their current roles, we are well on our way to newspeak by 2050. Indeed, one might give the minister's second reading speech on this bill an encouraging B+ in the dialect.

These provisions do not elevate or incentivise job security, fair conditions, good faith and genuine agreement. They entrench union power, effectively operating to let the Commonwealth grant lucrative contracts to enterprises in a union headlock. Currently, discrimination is not allowed to preference or punish employers whose employees are covered by an enterprise agreement, but this bill creates exceptions to make that discrimination not only acceptable but encouraged, to increase participation in enterprise bargaining.

Item 55 in the bill inserts proposed subsections 354(2A) to (2D) and effectively says it's okay to discriminate on the basis of coverage or noncoverage of an industrial agreement. In plain language, which, may I say, even defied the writers of the Bills Digest in this instance, discrimination will be allowed where employees are not covered by an enterprise agreement, where employees are covered by an enterprise agreement that does not cover an employee organisation—also known as a union—or where employees are the subject of proposed coverage or noncoverage.

Who is allowed to do the discriminating? The Commonwealth or 'a person acting as required or authorised under a contractual arrangement with a Commonwealth entity'—which, itself, is defined as the Commonwealth or a Commonwealth authority—'or in a Commonwealth contractual arrangement chain'. When is this discrimination allowed? In relation to 'making or administering a grant of financial assistance', 'procuring or providing goods or services' and 'entering into or fulfilling the terms and conditions of a contract of a type determined under proposed subsection 354(2C)'.

If that's not enough, then there's a catch-all clause in item 55, which gives the minister power to determine any contractual arrangements to enliven the permission to discriminate against employers whose employees are not covered by a union agreement. The bill's digest, almost hiding its own discomfort, states:

The EM does not provide guidance on which types of contractual arrangements might be the subject of such determinations.

Then, for good measure, the Albanese government throws in a definition of contractual arrangement: 'any deed, contract, undertaking or any other form of legally binding arrangement'. I'll paraphrase in oldspeak: 'Dear taxpayer, from now on we are only going to spend your money if, at the end of the day, the recipient has a union deal in the bag—one which our masters in the union movement tell us is good enough.'

It is unsurprising, therefore, that Australian industry's response to this part of the bill has been nothing short of well-founded outrage. The Australian Industry Group said:

Federal Government legislation that opens the door to favouring employers who have enterprise agreements with unions for taxpayer-funded procurement services is both deeply alarming and concerning.

They say the bill 'completely risks' undermining the principle of freedom of association 'by opening the door to either the current government or future governments forcing employers and their employees to strike deals with unions in order to commercially deal with the government'. Yesterday, in the Australian, chief executive of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Andrew McKellar, pointed out:

There are nearly one million employing businesses in Australia that operate without a union-negotiated enterprise agreement. This legislation marks every one of them as a second-class citizen in the eyes of the commonwealth, pushing them out of consideration and out of employment opportunities and revenue streams.

The Business Council of Australia condemned the legislation, saying, 'It would corrupt the integrity of Commonwealth procurement by allowing discrimination against businesses without union covered enterprise agreements,' which should alarm every Australian business and taxpayer. Bran Black, the CEO, summarised the provisions thus:

"This would give unions effective control over where taxpayer money goes. It is being introduced against every lesson the country has learned from the recent CFMEU investigations," Mr Black said. 

"Geoffrey Watson SC found some enterprise agreements in construction were bought for cash and awarded to criminals, and that these practices could drive legitimate businesses out of the market."

"Now, the Federal Government wants to make those same agreements a gateway to public contracts and grants. That creates a major corruption risk."

…      …   …

"Public money should go to businesses that can deliver, not businesses that have signed the right union agreement," Mr Black said. 

"The reach goes far beyond a single contract. A single Commonwealth project could impose these conditions on every business in its supply chain. The consequences would ripple through entire industries."

Master Builders addressed the proposed reforms with their typical plain speaking:

In the end, this provision will send a message that if you don't have a union backed bid then don't bother lodging a tender.

More importantly, Master Builders reminded the Albanese government of the potential backwards impact this will have on the building industry, where 98 per cent of building and construction is made up of small businesses who typically do not rely on enterprise agreements.

Finally, this bill lessens the requirements on the CFMEU administrator, which were set down when the Construction and General Division of the CFMEU was placed into administration in August 2024. Under the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Act of 2009, the CFMEU administrator is required to prepare and submit reports to the minister regarding the performance of the administration, including detailed financial reporting requirements, which failed to include the requisite level of financial reporting. This bill reduces the rigour required of that financial reporting, and no longer will the administrator be required to provide a financial report—but rather a scheme operation report. A financial report will still be required, albeit on a much looser timeframe. Yet again, this government is loosening the expectations placed on the CFMEU at precisely the time those demands for accountability and transparency should be getting louder each day.

The Commission of Inquiry into the CFMEU in Queensland reveals more corruption linked to the CMFEU's conduct in my home state that had an estimated cost of $15 billion to Victorian taxpayers. Despite all that evidence, this government continues to sing to the CFMEU's tune. Yesterday the Australian Chamber of Commerce tallied up the number of demands this government had met from the CFMEU's 2018 manifesto, Goodbye neoliberalismpenned by John Falzon but fully endorsed by the National Secretary of the CFMEU at the time—in which they stressed that the moral responsibility of government is to solidify the proper role of organised labour in a democratic society. The document has an 18-point plan and, for anyone wondering how it's relevant to this bill today, the bill is represented in point 5 of the document, which demands that the next federal government:

Implement Government Procurement rules that support trade unionism. Government should use their procurement decisions to achieve broader policy objectives that support the economy, jobs and working people.

As such, Labor should implement procurement rules that require tenderers to meet conditions of participation in order to qualify for government work, including having a unionised workforce/union agreement.

There it is.

This follows Labor's compliance with at least half the orders listed in the CFMEU's manifesto. The ABCC and ROC must be abolished. Tick. Make industry assistance conditional upon having a unionised workforce. Tick. Define casual work, rather than leaving it up to employers and employees. Tick. Encourage superannuation funds to promote unionism and direct their investments accordingly. Tick. Hold a referendum—can you believe this is in here?—to constitutionally enshrine a First Nations Voice to Parliament. Tick. Allow bargaining at any level: enterprise, industry, regional and national. Yes, that's in their pattern bargaining laws, so it's a tick. Unions must have free access to workplaces to represent and protect workers. Tick, tick, tick. The list goes on; it's all here.

The member for Watson got most of this manifesto implemented, and a couple more were done by Senator Watt in the other place. Now it falls to the member for Kingston to get the rest of the CFMEU wish list done. All the while, the evidence of CFMEU corruption continues to build up. The CFMEU has allowed rival bikie gangs to compete for control over drug dealing on government construction sites in my home state of Victoria. The CFMEU allegedly required workers to pay $100 in cash to former CFMEU officials under the guise of a charitable donation in order to be allocated a shift, generating $10,000 per occasion. The CFMEU has bullied and intimidated its way through the Labor caucus to the point where, despite clear evidence from Victoria Police, a royal commission into union corruption on taxpayer funded worksites remains unthinkable in my home state of Victoria. Rather than clamp down on the CFMEU, this bill continues that union's grip on this country's public policy agenda. Why? Because Labor is the political arm of the CFMEU.

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