Sarah Henderson (Corangamite, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Education representing the Minister for Employment. Will the minister inform the House how the government plans to restore the rule of law to our construction industry. What other views have been expressed that create obstacles to that goal?

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very grateful to the member for Corangamite for her question, because it gives me the opportunity to remind the people of Australia and the House that, under the Howard government, the then Minister for Workplace Relations—now the Prime Minister—ensured that there was a tough cop on the industrial beat through the establishment of the Australian Building and Construction Commission. That led to some very practical outcomes. One of those was that it saved the Australian consumers $7.5 billion. It also increased productivity in building and construction by 17 per cent after it was introduced.

Under the current Leader of the Opposition, who was then the weak and duplicitous workplace relations minister, he reversed these changes. He reversed the Australian Building and Construction Commission—it was scrapped. He introduced the Fair Work Building and Construction Division, which had less power and less money, and he brought the CFMEU back into the cabinet room and gave them a seat at the table of cabinet.

Even worse than the current Leader of the Opposition here in Australia, the leader of the opposition in Victoria has proposed ripping up the Victorian building code. He wants to tear up—

Opposition members: Hear, Hear!

'Hear, hear', they are saying. 'Hear, hear', the socialist left is saying. He wants to tear up the building code in Victoria. A very respectable Australian, no less than the former royal commissioner into the building and construction industry, Terence Cole, said about this idea: 'Only a political party enthralled to the building unions would contemplate abolishing a state's building code.' That is exactly what Daniel Andrews proposes to do if he is elected Premier on Saturday in Victoria. The CFMEU will be back at the cabinet table in Victoria, back running the state of Victoria, because a vote for the Australian Labor Party on Saturday is a vote for the CFMEU.

But even worse than that, a vote for Daniel Andrews is a vote for John Setka to be back at the cabinet table in Victoria. John Setka is the state secretary of the CFMEU. If Labor wins on Saturday, John Setka and the CFMEU will be telling Daniel Andrews and the Victorian Labor Party what to do. Laurie Ferguson is nodding his head. That is what he wants to see happen. He wants the CFMEU back running Victoria, but Victorians do not want it. They have had four years of industrial peace in that state. They do not want the bikies back running Victoria. A vote for Labor on Saturday is a vote for the CFMEU and John Setka.