Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Small and Family Business, the Workplace and Deregulation. Will the minister update the House on how the government is supporting small business in the construction sector? Is the minister aware of any approaches to the construction sector that endanger small and family business?

Craig Laundy (Reid, Liberal Party, Minister for Small and Family Business, the Workplace and Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Fisher for his question. I note not only his passion, pre politics, for construction—as I've said before, a unique combination of barrister and builder—but also his passion, since being elected, for small and family business. I've had the honour of being in his electorate several times talking with local small and family businesses.

I did want to focus on this most important sector of our economy. In the last five years since the election of a coalition government, we have seen a 17.8 per cent increase in employment in this most valuable sector. We have seen small business growth, with the number of small and family businesses operating in the construction sector seeing a net increase of 21,000 in the last 4½ to five years. I was asked about how that compares with the situation under those opposite. In the last 12 months of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government, there was a net decrease in the number of small and family business operating, amounting to 8,300. Apart from the economic policies that the Turnbull coalition government have put in place, what has been one of the key planks to this? It has been the reintroduction of the Australian Building and Construction Commission—the cop on the beat, protecting the 1.2 million construction workers employed by over 367,000 small and family businesses not just in the seat of Fisher but Australia-wide, protecting them every day from bullying, thuggery and intimidation from the CFMEU.

Just this morning, Justice Logan—let's face it, Federal Court judges are not the most outlandish of people—said about the CFMEU, in a ruling on that wonderful piece of gear David Hanna, the former secretary of the CFMEU in Queensland: 'An organisation which manifests an inability by its internal governance to rein in aberrant behaviour cannot expect to remain registered in its existing form'. But this organisation—people like Dave Hanna, formerly with it, and John Setka, the Victorian President of the CFMEU—is who the Leader of the Opposition is beholden to. He has done this secret deal with them. Even those on this own front bench do not know what's in it. He should come clean and tell not just them but the people of Australia, the small and family business operators Australia-wide.

The first order of business if he's elected will be to get rid of Building and Construction Commission, which uncovers behaviours like we are seeing today. The CFMEU has 74 representatives currently before courts in some 36 matters. That is who those opposite are beholden to. The Leader of the Opposition owes his position, his seat in that chair, to the support of the CFMEU. He should come out and condemn them for the behaviour that they continue to display on a daily basis. On this side of the House, we will stand with small and family business in defence of this behaviour day in and day out.

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper.