Leon Rebello (McPherson, Liberal National Party) | Hansard source

He changed his mind. Apparently, you can do that if you're the Prime Minister! That's ridiculous, and Australians are seeing through this. That's why, if you look around social media—and I'm sure the Prime Minister tries to keep off social media, because it's not his friend right now—if you actually get out and speak to people in your electorates—and I'm sure that the members of the backbench who are here today and who are watching from their offices have all got their heads down, because in their electorates they have seen the consequence of this prime minister's incompetence and inability to maintain the truth. That is something that is resonating with the Australian public right now. When you put through legislation like this, what do you expect? What do you expect?

Let's have a look at what the actual issue is. Like I said, the previous speaker on this debate only spoke about the good parts that we've all said we agree with anyway. She failed to speak to the controversial provisions in relation to procurement bargaining. How does this work? Currently, the Fair Work Act prohibits discrimination against an employer because of whether its employees are or are not covered by certain industrial instruments. I think that's fair. We shouldn't be giving preferential treatment. This includes the National Employment Standards, workplace instruments or enterprise agreements. In practice that means that no-one, including the Commonwealth, can prefer one company over another just because it has a union affiliated enterprise agreement. What does this bill do? The bill creates an exemption that would allow the Commonwealth to preference employers whose employees are covered by a union covered enterprise agreement. Put simply, it's actually allowing discrimination where the employer's employees are not covered by an enterprise agreement or a kind of enterprise agreement or are covered by an enterprise agreement that does not cover a union.

I hope that the teal party representatives in this place walk in here and speak to this bill. This is something that should raise serious alarm bells. Where is the National Anti-Corruption Commission when we need it? Because what this legislation is doing is wedging Australians, is wedging businesses and saying to them, 'If you don't tie yourself to a union, we're not going to help you.' That's wrong. It's wrong fundamentally and in principle, and it's yet again an example of the Labor Party at its worst.

If you ask around, it's not just the public that is starting to notice this government's failures; it's not just members on this side of the House who are pointing them out. It's people across the sector and across industry in this country. And I note the stakeholders who have contributed to this debate—none of whom were quoted by the member who spoke previously, by the way, who failed to focus on the controversial parts of this legislation. The Business Council of Australia said:

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

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. 

But it's not just the Business Council of Australia. The Ai group said:

A cornerstone of our workplace relations system is the principle of 'freedom of association', which is the idea that workers a have right to join or not to join a union. Legislation introduced into the parliament today completely risks undermining this vital principle by opening the door to either the current or future governments forcing employers and their employees to strike deals with unions in order to commercially deal with the Government. … The simplest course would be to just abandon the proposal entirely.

But instead of abandoning the proposal, what has the government done? They've tied it in to something we fundamentally support, because on this side of the House we are prepared to work with the government on reasonable reforms in relation to the Fair Work Commission. But the government—again, in fine form and in typical form of this Prime Minister—is wedging us, and the government is trying to play politics yet again, instead of determining good policy.

I represent the southern Gold Coast, and I acknowledge that there's another Queenslander in the room here in the member for Wide Bay. And I will say that we've gone through this Labor Party obsession with the CFMEU and with trade unions who are not doing the right thing time and time again, and we've gone through a decade of incompetent Labor governments at a state level. We've seen the Deputy Premier of Queensland, who was elected only in the last two years, having to come in and fix some of the mess that was left behind in Queensland. What has he said in relation to this legislation? He wrote to the minister, accusing the Albanese government of trying to revive Queensland's most controversial construction policy on a national scale, jeopardising the 2032 games delivery. In the letter he declared that Queensland would not back proposed workplace law changes that he claims would nationalise the former best-practice industry conditions, or BPIC, policy—dubbed the CFMEU tax.

Now, I know I'm a federal politician, but I tell you, ever since Queensland addressed BPIC, the number of small businesses and their employees who are coming up to me and saying, 'That was one of the best decisions of the Crisafulli government' is endless. The reason I say that is, again: where is the National Anti-Corruption Commission when we need it? What we're seeing here is a government that is intent on playing politics, and they're not doing what's in the national interest.

In this place I always like to reflect, because I think we have a duty to do so, on the implications of legislation on the Australian taxpayer. What the government is asking us to sign off on today is a situation where the Australian taxpayer is paying to preference producers of goods or services who are affiliated with certain unions. The consequence of that, at a time when we need to manage our national finances far better than we're doing, is that the prices of things are going to go up. We're not going to get the most cost-effective, the most value-for-money situation or solution, but we are going to get the most Labor aligned solution. That is not what the Australian taxpayer deserves.

We know that this government is struggling. They are really struggling to manage the economy. They don't know how, quite frankly. They don't know how to generate wealth. So what they're doing, and we're seeing this across the board, is that they're finding pockets of our community that have generated wealth—those who have invested, who have worked hard, who have saved, who are retirees now—and they're saying, 'We're going to take the wealth from you, and we're going to reallocate it to somewhere else, because we don't know how to grow the economy ourselves.' That's the ethic of this government, and that's the ethic of Labor. It's fundamentally a Labor Party value, I'd say.

We're now also seeing a government who, as a consequence of not being able to manage the economy, is desperate for money. What they're doing is they're spending more at a time when we actually need to be spending less as a country. We're fuelling inflation. This government's fuelling inflation, and they're doing that through this legislation, because we're not going to be putting the principle of value for money at the centre of Commonwealth procurement policy. If we're not doing that, why should anybody in this House be asked to support this legislation?

As I said, the coalition supports the practical reforms that will help the Fair Work Commission deal with its workload. If the Prime Minister and those opposite had any respect for the Australian people, any respect for the people in the galleries today, what he would do and what they would do is they would separate this bill into two parts. They would take out the procurement bargaining sections and separate them from the reasonable reforms to the Fair Work Commission. I note that none of the contributions of those opposite are focused on the procurement bargaining provisions. They're all focused on the Fair Work Commission side. Those opposite would find that they would get support to put through the appropriate legislation, and then we could have a proper discussion about the bits that are controversial. This goes to the hide of this government. It goes to their irreverence and their inability to do what's right in the national interest. I say that the bill in its current form should be voted down.

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