Mark Coulton (Parkes, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Education and Training, representing the Minister for Employment. Will the minister update the House on the government's plans to maintain the rule of law in our workplaces, and what obstacles stand in the way?

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

I am delighted to get the question from the member for Parkes. It is a very serious issue that he raises. Unfortunately, the CFMEU, the union often at the centre of these kinds of allegations and stories, has again been in the newspapers today, this time on the front page of The Australian Financial Review, facing more allegations of intimidation and unlawful behaviour and thuggery, this time against the Sydney builder BKH Group, who are building near Sydney Airport, being investigated by Fair Work Building and Construction for their treatment of an employer, locking the gates on a building for which they had had no responsibility to do so and attacking, verbally and almost physically, officers of Fair Work Building and Construction.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

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

I suppose you think that is amusing, do you? This is from Nigel Hadgkiss, who is the Director of Fair Work Building and Construction:

The investigators received a hostile reception, including a female investigator being spat at by a male individual. This is the same female investigator who was called an f—ing s— at a construction site at Barangaroo last year.

Do you think that is acceptable? We do not on this side of the House. We certainly do not. That is why we are trying to get the rule of law instituted on building and construction sites around Australia. It is why we introduced the Australian Building and Construction Commission in the Howard government and we are trying to bring it back. The Leader of the Opposition has voted against the reinstatement of the Australian Building and Construction Commission in the Senate. We are trying to create the Registered Organisations Commission. Again, the Leader of the Opposition is stopping that from happening. On this side of the House, we are taking these issues seriously and we are trying to act on them. On the other side of the House, the Leader of the Opposition continues to allow the CFMEU to run rampant on building and construction sites in Australia. His only response is that it is okay if bikies turn up to construction sites as long as they are wearing plain clothes. Plain clothes thuggery is fine, but thuggery in bikie colours is off limits. It is not the thuggery that worries the Leader of the Opposition; it is what they are wearing: the branding of the bikies and the CFMEU.

Unfortunately, the Leader of the Opposition is like a pane of glass. He is like that man on the stairs who was there today but was not there yesterday. He is the man on the stairs in the poem: 'Yesterday, upon the stair, I met a man who wasn't there.' That is the Leader of the Opposition: he is a man without policies; he is a man without principles; he has no substance. It was exposed on Jon Faine last Friday, and there is going to be a lot more of that between now and the election, as the public discover that this man has no substance; he is just a pane of glass.