Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction) | Link to this | Hansard source

This bill should really be called 'Bringing the CFMEU to Canberra', because that is what this bill is all about, and the deceitful and dishonest way the government is ramming this bill through is an utter disgrace. It will have enormous consequences for all major federal government procurement processes. What it will mean is we will see cost blowouts on all of those. We will see cost overruns on all of those. We will see time delays. It will be an absolute debacle. I cannot believe that this government is doing this. It only has to look at where state governments have done this kind of dirty deal to see what the implications are going to be for this nation. Look at Queensland under the previous Labor government, and have a look at the disasters that occurred because of legislation like this. Then go to Victoria, the state which is completely and utterly broke, where we've seen the CFMEU not only infiltrating workplaces but then also bringing with it organised crime into those workplaces. Now, we're seeing from judicial inquiries that there is $15 billion worth of corruption in these major projects in Victoria.

What does the Albanese Labor government do? It decides that it'd better follow what's happening in Victoria and what happened in Queensland. This is appalling. It's atrocious. That is why we will oppose this legislation. We oppose the way the government is going about it as well. Once again, it shows we have a dishonest Prime Minister who says one thing before an election and then does the complete opposite after—but I'll get to that later.

Let's have a look what serious industry groups are saying about what the Labor Party are trying to ram through with this bill. The Business Council of Australia has warned that public money should go to businesses that can deliver, not businesses that have signed the right union agreement. The Ai Group has warned that the proposal risks undermining freedom of association. It undermines freedom of association by opening the door to governments forcing employers and employees to strike deals with unions in order to commercially deal with the government. I wonder who they've got in mind. They're going to force companies to do deals with the CFMEU. Good on you, Albanese Labor government. That's just going to do wonders for value for money for the Australian taxpayer. What does Master Builders Australia say? They've warned that the provisions may unfairly exclude businesses lawfully operating under awards, including small businesses in the building and construction industry.

If you're a business, lawfully going about what you do, but you don't have the preferred union contract that the government wants you to sign up on, then, bad luck, you're not going to get the deal. Why would they be doing this, especially when it comes to the building sector? They want their mates in the CFMEU in on the deal. It's an absolute national disgrace what they're trying to ram through the parliament. What does the Housing Industry Association say? They have raised concerns that the bill effectively fast tracks the Secure Australian Jobs Code while that process is still in consultation and development.

What the government is trying to do is, without even putting in place proper protections, look after their mates. It just goes to show you what the priorities of this government are. Their first priority is to make sure you're taxed more. We've got Sir Tax-a-lot, the Treasurer, wanting to find more and more ways to tax you. That's the first thing they want to do. They want to spend more, and they're trying to find every which way they can to spend the taxpayer dollar. That spending, which is at record levels, is going to increase even more now because they're going to make sure that major projects have a dirty deal with the union movement on them. What's that going to lead to? It's going to lead to time overruns and cost overruns.

If you want an example, have a look at Snowy Hydro. You've got the most incompetent minister the Commonwealth has ever seen, the Minister for Climate Change and Energy. Not only did he change the contract arrangements, which has seen a blow-out from $6 billion to $12 billion, but they're now forecasting it could go as high as $42 billion. Guess what they've done with Snowy? They've also done a workplace relations deal that's likely to add billions and billions of dollars. So you can take what the minister for climate change has done and just say, 'Well, that's what's going to happen across the board now with all these Commonwealth procurement proposals.' It beggars belief that they would want to do it, especially when you can see the damage and the harm that has been done across the nation where state Labor governments have done this type of thing. It beggars belief that they would be trying to do it.

And it not only beggars belief that they're doing it, but so does the way that they're doing it. It's so underhanded. Because guess what they've done. They've put it in with another bill that is about improving the Fair Work Commission and how it goes about its job and trying to make it more timely. And guess what the Prime Minister said about this type of 'wedge-islation'. This is what he said on the record, and he's said it numerous times on the record—and once again it shows you how dishonest he is. This is what he said at his first press conference as Prime Minister on 23 May 2022:

I look forward to leading a Government that makes Australians proud. A Government that doesn't seek to divide, that doesn't seek to have wedges …

That was at his first press conference. Then, when he addressed the caucus, when he addressed all the Labor Party members, this is what he said:

We want to be more inclusive. We want to make sure there's less shouting and more delivery. The former government sat around and talked about how to wedge the other side of politics. We're not really interested in that.

And they just sat back and let him be dishonest. You can't make this stuff up. You cannot make this up. That's at his first caucus meeting as Prime Minister, after his first press conference as Prime Minister.

And then, as opposition leader, in the House of Reps on 17 September 2019 he said:

The objective is not to promote legislation; it's to promote 'wedgislation'—it's about trying to find legislation that the Labor Party will oppose. This is a great example of it. It's a government really in search of an agenda and a plan.

Well, you've been damned by your own words, Prime Minister. This is what he said at a doorstop as opposition leader in May 2022: 'This is a guy who never looks to bring people together, who never looks for unity. It's always just looking for wedges and always looking for division.' Once again, damned by your own words, Prime Minister.

This is what he said on 10 May 2022: 'I want to bring people together. I think we've had a decade of division, a decade of a Prime Minister who is always looking for the wedge. What we need to do is actually work out what our common interests are.' I can tell you: this bill is 'wedge-islation' and there is no common interest in it. And yet you're happy for it to be rammed through the parliament in this form. It is a disgrace.

This is what he said on 3 May 2022: 'For this guy, everything is an opportunity to play politics. He doesn't have legislation, he has "wedge-islation". They sit around the cabinet. They don't think about the national interest. They think about how they can wedge Labor on this issue.' Seriously, the hypocrisy knows no bounds. I can go on and on, but I will give one more example. It's like Pinocchio's nose growing. It's example after example after example; it just grows and grows and grows. He said:

My opponent is always looking for an argument, always looking for a disagreement, never looking for a solution.

…   …   …

I think really people are sick of a government that has 'wedgislation', as I call it, looking to wedge the Opposition rather than legislation.

Talk about damned by your own incompetence. Talk about damned by your own words. Talk about damned by your deceit. Talk about being absolutely damned by your hypocrisy.

I've talked about the 'wedge-islation', and this is where it becomes important as to how the opposition is going to deal with this bill. The coalition supports practical reforms that improve the operation of the Fair Work Commission—we have been clear on that. But we cannot support the bill in its current form while it contains these appalling provisions that will bring the CFMEU to Canberra. We cannot support that.

The government should split the bill. That is why the opposition has circulated detailed amendments to that effect. We don't want the CFMEU coming to Canberra. Why those opposite do is beyond me, but we do not. This is where it goes to the 'wedge-islation'. I want to make very clear what the government has done here. Yesterday's gag motion—this was gagged—from the Leader of the House will mean that there will be no opportunity for the opposition to speak to other amendments. This matters because, at this stage, the opposition has circulated an amendment which tries to achieve the same objectives as the amendment moved by the member for Wentworth. I understand that the member for Wentworth's amendment will be considered first, therefore obviating the opposition's amendment. Without Labor's gag, the opposition may have been able to move its amendment first. That's what we were going to do. As it stands, Labor's gag motion prevents the normal consideration-in-detail process from occurring. Still, if our circulated amendment were to pass, the coalition would support this bill because we'd take out the 'bring the CFMEU to Canberra' part and deal with the Fair Work Commission part. But it doesn't. That is why we will not support this bill. We will not stand by and allow the government to rush through under a gag motion this appalling piece of legislation which brings the CFMEU back to Canberra and basically opens the taxpayer up to enormous cost overruns, which is the last thing we need as a country at this moment.

Julie-Ann Campbell (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

In a surprising moment in this place, the member for Wannon opposes legislation that fundamentally is focused on workplace relations reform. What a shocker! And it's so unsurprising in actual fact because the member for Wannon voted against same job, same pay. He reckons that, if you're working side-by-side, you shouldn't be getting paid the same. The member for Wannon sent manufacturing workers overseas and thought that their jobs should be offshored. These are the architects of WorkChoices. They're the architects of AWAs. They are the people who are the natural enemy of working Australians. And they've got their backs up today because one of their favourite pastimes is giving working people a big kick. Like Dennis Shanahan, I don't think that endless alliteration and the new wordplay that we've heard today is anywhere near sound political strategy, but I'll play along.

The member for Wannon is the worst for workers not only because of the positions that they've taken in terms of workplace relations not just over this term but for decades but also because of what the coalition have stood for when it comes to reforms that help everyday working Australians every day. That's why they voted against a tax cut for every working Australian. That's why they chose to vote against policy that would assist working Australians to get into their very first home. And that's why they voted against every single piece of cost-of-living relief moved by this Labor government.

Across my electorate on Brisbane's south side, people work hard for their families. Whether it's a tradie from Coopers Plains heading out before dawn, a nurse at the QEII hospital finishing a long shift or a barista in Sunnybank, people want the same thing. They want a fair day's pay for a fair day's work, they want secure employment and they want a workplace relations system that works for them. A system that protects workers, a system that supports business, a system that rewards productivity and helps people get ahead—that's what this bill is about.

The Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Building Cooperative Workplaces No. 1) Bill 2026 makes a series of practical improvements to Australia's workplace relations framework. These changes are designed to ensure Australia's workplace relations system remains fair and is efficient and capable of delivering better outcomes for workers, employers and indeed the broader economy. Legislation such as this is often portrayed by those opposite as a choice between supporting workers and supporting business, but the reality is that strong economies and strong workplaces depend on both of those things. They depend on workers having secure jobs, fair wages and confidence in their rights at work, and they depend on businesses having the certainty to invest, to innovate and to create opportunities.

My local electorate is full of fantastic small businesses. The other day I was at French & Mor cafe in Sunnybank with Bianca. I was also at Endua in Archerfield, which specialises in electrolyser technology. I was talking to Richard Huang, who heads up the Taiwanese Chamber of Commerce. They're all on the south side and all running strong small businesses. What they all have in common is that they want certainty for those businesses and a workplace relations system that is fair, that is effective and that is fit for purpose and helps make that possible. That's why it's important that our workplace laws and institutions continue to evolve alongside the workplaces, the industries and the technologies that they are designed to support. This bill contains a series of practical reforms designed to strengthen that system—so, no, it is not surprising that those opposite don't support it.

The Fair Work Commission sits at the core of Australia's workplace relations system. Every year, it assists thousands of workers and employers to resolve disputes, to negotiate agreements and to access workplace protections. When the commission works well, disputes are resolved more quickly, uncertainty is reduced and workplaces can move forward. But, when delays occur, the consequences are felt by everyone. Workers can be left waiting months for certainty about their future, businesses can be left navigating lengthy and costly processes, and resources that should be directed towards resolving disputes can instead be consumed by procedural issues.

I cut my teeth representing working people in the manufacturing industry. When you sit down with someone who doesn't know what's going to happen with their job, who's not sure where their next pay cheque might come from, who can't plan for what their family might be able to do in the months and years ahead—that's a problem. This bill responds to those challenges. It introduces a series of practical reforms that will help the commission manage its workload more effectively and resolve those kinds of matters more efficiently.

Importantly, these reforms are not about reducing workplace protections, nor are they about limiting access to the commission. They are about ensuring the commission can focus its time and resources where they matter the most—resolving disputes, supporting bargaining and delivering outcomes. The bill streamlines a number of administrative processes and provides additional mechanisms to deal with applications that are frivolous, are vexatious or have no reasonable prospects of success. That matters and it matters because every hour spent dealing with matters that have little prospect of success is an hour that cannot be spent assisting workers and employers with genuine workplace disputes that need to be resolved so that all parties can move forward.

The bill also responds to practical challenges that have emerged in recent years, including growing workloads and increasing complexity across the workplace relations system. Following a Federal Court decision several years ago, the commission has often been required to determine complex jurisdictional questions before parties can even begin the process of conciliation or mediation. The complexity starts before they even get to the table to try and work things through. In practical terms, this can mean that workers and employers spend additional time and resources arguing about whether a matter can be heard before they've even had an opportunity to attempt to resolve the dispute itself.

This bill restores a much more practical approach. It allows the commission to move more quickly to assisting parties to resolve disputes through conciliation and mediation, while preserving that ability for substantive issues to be properly considered if a matter proceeds further. That is sensible reform. It would allow the commission to focus its resources on helping parties reach outcomes, rather than getting bogged down in procedural questions. Fair outcomes are what's important here. That's what this legislation is about. We know it impacts on livelihoods. We know it impacts on family planning. We know that it goes beyond the worker and the business. It goes to the people surrounding them. For working people, it goes to the impact on their families. For businesses, it goes to the aftermarket and their employees. Ensuring that that is resolved as soon as possible is surely a logical, simple and straightforward reform that the Australian people need.

As we've said, the bill also strengthens the commission's ability to deal with applications that are frivolous. The overwhelming majority of people who engage with the Fair Work Commission do so legitimately and in good faith, but where processes are misused, it places additional pressure on the system and it delays outcomes for others wanting to use the system to resolve their challenges. These measures will help protect the integrity of the commission while ensuring genuine applicants continue to have access to workplace protections and dispute resolution mechanisms. Labor understands that workers deserve timely outcomes, that employers deserve timely outcomes and that the Fair Work Commission deserves the tools necessary to perform its role effectively for everyone.

One of the most effective ways of building productive and cooperative workplaces is through good-faith bargaining. Enterprise bargaining allows workers and employees to negotiate arrangements that reflect the particular needs of that workplace. When bargaining works well, workers can secure improved wages and conditions, employers can secure arrangements that support productivity, flexibility and long-term planning, and workplaces can develop solutions that benefit both parties.

This bill also includes practical reforms designed to streamline bargaining processes in circumstances where parties have already established successful bargaining relationships. We don't want things to get bogged down. We want to make sure that, if people can come to the table, they can find fair outcomes. Rather than requiring workers and employers to repeat unnecessary procedural steps over and over, these changes allow bargaining to proceed more efficiently, where appropriate safeguards are already in place. This is not about changing the fundamental principles of bargaining. It's about reducing unnecessary duplication and allowing parties to focus on reaching agreements and, again, to focus on reaching outcomes.

This bill also includes a practical change to bargaining arrangements. Where employers and workers have already successfully negotiated a supported bargaining agreement and wish to bargain for a replacement agreement covering substantially the same cohort, the legislation creates a more streamlined pathway to recommence that bargaining. At present, parties can be required to repeat that again and again. It means that additional administrative burden for employers, employee representatives and the commission can come off.

The reforms before the House recognise that, where bargaining relationships are already established and already functioning effectively, unnecessary procedural duplication serves little purpose. Instead, parties should be able to focus their efforts on negotiating those outcomes. This is a practical example of the broader purpose of this bill: protecting rights and maintaining safeguards while ensuring that the workplace relations system operates as efficiently as possible.

The bill also removes an outdated restriction that currently prevents the Commonwealth from considering enterprise agreements when making certain procurement and funding decisions. Importantly, this does not require businesses to have enterprise agreements; nor does it override value-for-money requirements. This bill forms part of the Albanese Labor government's broader commitment to supporting workers. That's in our blood; it's in our DNA. We have always been the party that backs workers in when they need it most, and strengthening job security and helping Australians to manage cost-of-living pressures is an important part of that.

That's why this government has strengthened job security. It's why we delivered same job, same pay. We've criminalised wage theft. We've introduced the right to disconnect. We've expanded paid parental leave. In one week's time, mums and dads across this nation will be able to access 26 weeks of paid parental leave. These reforms are designed to help Australians, and, at its core, this bill is about ensuring that Australia's workplace relations system continues to work as intended and continues to work for everyday working Australians.

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

It gives me great pleasure to speak after that ideological sermon that we had to just witness here from the former secretary of the Australian Labor Party in Queensland.

Julie-Ann Campbell (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

The ideology of treating workers well?

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

What that ideological sermon failed to do was speak about half of this bill, the Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Building Cooperative Workplaces No. 1) Bill 2026. It spoke about only one part, which was very convenient, and it's the part of this legislation that is non-controversial. I say to those opposite that you should be absolutely ashamed of what you're trying to do. You're bringing the CFMEU to Canberra, and this is all about politics. It's all politics, despite the fact that we've got a prime minister, a treasurer and a government who have continuously said that they're going to do politics differently and that they're going to work in the interests of the Australian people. It's all rubbish, and we're seeing that today in this legislation.

The coalition has long said that it will support practical reforms that help the Fair Work Commission deal with its workload. There are some serious issues that the Fair Work Commission has encountered over the last couple of years, and part of this legislation is designed to address that. But the government shouldn't be using those sensible Fair Work Commission reforms as cover for passing other, unrelated, procurement changes that are going to mean Australians and the Australian taxpayer are worse off. The bill should be split.

I don't know how many times I've come into this chamber in the 12 months that I've been here and had this same conversation, time and time again, where the government finds some legislation that they know is going to have support from the opposition because it's reasonable. And what do they do? They find something that is going to give them a political strategic benefit or ideological advantage and put it through the same legislation and try and ram it through the parliament. That's what we're seeing here today.

Let's talk about the process. The Parliament of Australia is a place of debate, and it should be a debate that is free flowing. It should be a debate where we consider the detail of what is proposed by the government of the day. But what did we see yesterday? We saw the Leader of the House come in here and announce a suspension motion which, in effect, guillotines debate on the bill. It wasn't only relevant to this bill, but it also contained a series of gags on other controversial legislation.

How does this compare to what the Prime Minister has said in the past about how he's going to do business differently and how he's going to conduct himself as Prime Minister of this country? In his very first press conference, the Prime Minister said:

I look forward to leading a Government that makes Australians proud. A Government that doesn't seek to divide, that doesn't seek to have wedges …

In his very first caucus address as Prime Minister, he said:

We want to be more inclusive. We want to make sure there's less shouting and more delivery. The former government sat around and talked about how to wedge the other side of politics.

There's a theme here. As opposition leader, even before he came into government, in relation to our side of politics he said:

He doesn't have legislation. He has wedge-islation.

They sit around the Cabinet, they don't think about the national interest.

Something must have happened when this prime minister was elected. What's happened is we've got a prime minister who said one thing before and who did the exact opposite afterwards. It's not just in relation to process that he does that. It's also in relation to policy. We've seen that in its finest form, as a case study, after the most recent budget: the Prime Minister went to the Australian people no fewer than 50 times saying he wasn't going to make changes to negative gearing policy in this country, and what did he do? He made those changes and he looked down—

Melissa Price (Durack, Liberal Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

He changed his mind.

Leon Rebello (McPherson, Liberal National Party) | Link to this | 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.

Tom French (Moore, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise in support of the Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Building Cooperative Workplaces No. 1) Bill 2026. This bill makes practical improvements to the workplace relations framework. It supports the Fair Work Commission to manage its workload, improves supported bargaining, allows Commonwealth procurement to promote secure jobs and fair conditions, and provides better support for truckies and road transport businesses. Some of these reforms are technical, but they are not minor. In workplace relations, procedure counts. It determines whether a worker can access a remedy, whether an employer can get certainty, whether a union can progress bargaining and whether the independent umpire can deal with disputes efficiently.

I come to this debate with a practical view of industrial relations. I was a qualified electrician before I became an industrial lawyer. I represented electricians for the Electrical Trades Union and firefighters for the United Professional Firefighters Union. I've been covered by industrial agreements. I've relied on them, I've enforced them and I've helped negotiate them. That experience gives me a clear view of what is important. Workplace rights must be strong, but they must also be usable. A right buried behind a delay, cost or procedural obstruction is not much comfort to the person who needs it.

The Fair Work Commission is central to this system. Its workload has increased substantially, including through the growth of paid agents, the rise of artificial intelligence in the preparation and filing of materials, and the consequences of the Milford decision, which affected how some general protections and unlawful termination disputes are processed. The commission needs to be fair, but it also needs to be able to move. A system that is too slow is not fair. A system too easily clogged by procedural arguments is not fair. A system that allows hopeless claims to consume time that should be spent on genuine disputes is not fair.

One of the key reforms in this bill concerns jurisdictional objections in general protections dismissal disputes and unlawful termination disputes. At present, where a jurisdictional objection is raised about whether a dismissal or termination actually occurred, the commission may have to determine that issue before it can proceed to conciliation or mediation. I've seen what that kind of procedural fight can do. When I worked as an industrial lawyer for the firefighters union, jurisdictional issues arose in proceedings in the state industrial system. That's not the federal system affected by this bill, but the practical effect is similar. The parties can spend time and money arguing about whether the umpire can deal with the dispute before anyone gets near the substance of the dispute itself.

Sometimes a jurisdictional objection is properly taken. Parties are entitled to run legitimate arguments about jurisdiction. Those arguments can be important, and they should remain available. But when a dispute becomes locked in a preliminary jurisdictional contest, the process can slow down, costs can increase and the focus can shift away from resolving the workplace issue. This bill addresses the unintended consequences of Milford by allowing the Fair Work Commission to move to conciliation or mediation without having to first determine the jurisdictional issues as a preliminary step. That does not remove the jurisdictional argument. It does not stop a party from maintaining its position. It does not prevent the issue being determined later if required. It simply allows the commission to get the parties into a dispute resolution process and test whether the dispute can be resolved.

I just want to wish WA's professional firefighters well in their ongoing pay and conditions dispute with the state government. Firefighters do difficult and dangerous work. They are relied upon by the community in the worst moments of people's lives. Their bargaining campaign is a reminder that industrial relations is about whether the people who protect us are properly valued, properly staffed and properly supported.

This bill also allows the president of the Fair Work Commission to delegate the power to certify that a general protections dispute is unlikely to be resolved by conciliation. Those certificates allow parties to take the next step, including consent arbitration or court proceedings. Where a trained commission staff member has handled the conciliation and dealt directly with the parties, it is practical for that person to issue the certificate. That is not a final determination of rights. It is an administrative step that allows the dispute to progress.

The bill also gives the commission stronger powers to deal with claims that are frivolous, vexatious or have no reasonable prospects of success. Access to justice counts, but access to justice does not mean allowing the commission's processes to be misused. The commission must be available to genuine applicants, but it also has to protect respondents and its own resources from claims that are plainly hopeless or brought for an improper purpose.

The bill also expands the circumstances in which the commission can decide a dispute on the papers without holding a hearing or conducting a conference. Importantly, the final bill requires the consent of the parties before the commission can determine certain contested disputes on the papers. That was an important change following consultation. Efficiency is being improved without removing procedural fairness. Not every dispute requires an oral hearing. Some disputes can be fairly determined on documents or agreed facts. If the parties consent and the commission is satisfied the dispute can properly determine that way, the system should allow it.

The bill also improves supported bargaining. Supported bargaining is particularly important in sectors where workers are lower paid, workforces are fragmented or traditional single-enterprise bargaining is difficult. If the commission has already authorised bargaining for substantially the same group of employees and employers, the law should not force everyone to repeat unnecessary procedural steps.

The next major part of this bill concerns enterprise agreements and Commonwealth procurement. The government has committed to developing a secure Australian jobs code to ensure Commonwealth spending supports secure jobs and fair pay and conditions. Public money should not drive a race to the bottom. It should support decent employment practices, lawful conduct and fair standards. I'm in this place today because of what those opposite did when they had total control of the industrial relations system, and I would like to remind everyone that they would implement Work Choices again if given the chance.

Enterprise agreements that are genuinely agreed and negotiated in good faith are a transparent and effective way of delivering secure jobs and fair conditions to workers. They can also deliver flexibility and productivity for employers. A good enterprise agreement is not just about wages, although wages do count. It can deal with classifications, rosters, allowances, dispute resolution, redundancy, training, travel, accommodation and safety. It gives workers a structured voice and it gives employers certainty about the rules of the workplace. This bill allows government purchasing power to promote fairer wages and more secure jobs through enterprise agreements where it is appropriate to do so. It does not impose an obligation on the Commonwealth to do this in every case. Commonwealth entities will still need to comply with procurement rules, grant guidelines, value-for-money requirements and delivery obligations.

I want to acknowledge the current bargaining being undertaken by the Electrical Trades Union with BHP in the Pilbara, and I wish them well. That bargaining involves workers performing skilled and demanding work in one of the most economically significant regions in the country. Electricians, technicians, maintenance workers and other tradespeople keep critical operations running. The work is complex. The environment is demanding. Their contribution should be reflected in the agreements that cover them. I understand from my own working life what those kinds of rosters mean. During my time as a construction electrician, I worked a four weeks on, one week off roster. From outside the industry, people just see the headline wages. They do not see the cost of being away for long stretches—missed birthdays, pressure placed on partners, strain on children and the difficulty of coming home and trying to fit back into family routines before leaving again.

The research into FIFO mental health has made those issues plain. The Western Australian report into FIFO arrangements found that FIFO workers and their partners are an at-risk group for mental ill health. It also identified the importance of roster design, workplace culture, accommodation, bullying, stigma and support services. That is why bargaining is important. It is not only about the hourly rate. It is about the structure of work. It is about rosters, fatigue management, travel, accommodation, consultation, dispute resolution and safety. It is about whether workers have a real and lawful mechanism to raise issues before they become crises.

The bill also supports the National Construction Industry Forum. The forum is a tripartite body that brings together government, employers and workers to provide advice on work in the building and construction industry. This bill updates the ministerial membership of the forum to reflect the machinery-of-government changes and recognises the strong skills component of its work. That is sensible. You cannot have a serious discussion about construction without discussing skills. Apprenticeships, training quality, workforce shortages and pathways into trades are central to the future of the industry.

The final major area of the bill concerns road transport. The Albanese Labor government is committed to ensuring truckies get a fair go. This bill allows a new road transport industry high-income threshold to be made for contractors in the transport industry. That is necessary because conventional high-income thresholds are not fit for purpose in road transport. A contractor may appear to have a higher income on paper, but the reality is different once fuel, tires, maintenance, insurance, finance, registration, compliance and downtime are all taken into account. Gross income is not the same as take-home income. In road transport, that distinction counts.

The purpose of this reform is to ensure more truckies can access the quick and practical process in the Fair Work Commission to challenge unfair contracts. For many road transport contractors and small transport businesses, unfair contract terms and unfair termination can have serious consequences. A truck is a major capital investment. If a contract is terminated unfairly or unfair terms shift too much risk down the chain, the impact can be immediate and severe. Road transport is essential to the Australian economy. Goods move because truck drivers and transport businesses do the work. The law should reflect the commercial reality they face.

I also note that this bill has been subject to consultation. The department has consulted with state and territory government officials, the Fair Work Commission and key stakeholders, including the ACTU, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Australian Industry Group and the Business Council of Australia. As a result of that consultation, the bill was refined. Party consent is now required before the commission can determine certain contested disputes on the papers. Proposed expanded grounds for dismissing applications were not proceeded with. That is what consultation should do. It should test the drafting, identify the risks and improve the final bill.

The financial impact of this bill is modest, and no additional funding is provided. Measures supporting the more efficient commission processes are expected to have a minor positive impact on the commission and help it respond to increased lodgements.

The common thread through this bill is practical improvement. It helps the Fair Work Commission deal with disputes more efficiently. It supports enterprise bargaining and supported bargaining. It allows Commonwealth purchasing power to promote fairer wages and secure jobs where appropriate. It recognises the real economics of road transport. It supports tripartite consultation in construction. A fair workplace relations system must protect workers, give employers certainty, support bargaining and equip the independent umpire to resolve disputes properly.

Those opposite no doubt say this bill is about favouring unions, and that is the usual line. It misses the point entirely. This bill is not about punishing businesses; it is about recognising businesses that do the right thing. If an employer sits down with its workforce, bargains in good faith, reaches a genuine enterprise agreement, pays fair wages, provides secure conditions and gives workers a voice, why should the Commonwealth be prevented from taking that into account? The Liberal Party says it supports business, but too often what it supports is the lowest common denominator. It should not be controversial to say that public money should support employers who bargain properly, comply with the law and provide decent jobs. The businesses that do the right thing should not be undercut by competitors whose business models rely on minimum standards, insecure work and avoiding bargaining wherever possible.

This is where the opposition's arguments fall apart. They say they are standing up for business, but, in opposing this bill, they are standing against the businesses that have done the work to negotiate proper agreements with their employees. They are standing against employers who value certainty. They are standing against employers who understand that good wages, proper consultation and safe systems of work are not obstacles to productivity but part of productivity. They are standing against the small transport businesses and owner-drivers who need a fairer threshold because gross income is not the same as take-home income. They are standing against a more efficient Fair Work Commission, even though delay hurts workers and employers alike.

This bill does not ask employers to do anything unreasonable. It says that, where employers bargain properly, where they provide secure jobs and fair conditions and where they contribute more to a cooperative workplace relations system, that should be recognised. That is not anti-business; that is pro-business. I commend the bill to the House.

Zoe McKenzie (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) | Link to this | 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.

Madonna Jarrett (Brisbane, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

My dad got up every morning and was at work by seven or 7.30 at the latest. He worked overtime. He was on call regularly, and quite often he got home when I was going to school. He worked hard. When he got home he told stories of his day. Sometimes maybe there was an injury; maybe there was a fight with the boss. More often than not it was a great day doing what he loved: being a sparky. He knew what he would bring home in his pay packet most weeks, which helped mum plan for meals and buy medicines and schoolbooks.

But part of his working life also included the infamous Queensland SEQEB dispute. Basically, that dispute was an attempt by the South East Queensland Electricity Board to replace permanent workers with contract labour. The Electrical Trade Union members went on strike to defend jobs and security, and, not long after that strike began, the government declared a state of emergency. It rushed in a series of anti-union/anti-strike laws, making picket lines illegal. The dispute stretched over the following months, and the striking workers held out with a lot of community support. My parents were involved in that dispute. They were on the picket lines and were part of the community that coordinated food and financial support for families who were affected. As children, we saw the tears and the hardship facing mums and dads when the workplace and industrial system broke down and when the community those workers had created was threatened.

This is just one story based on the memories of me as a small child whose family relied on her dad having a safe and fair workplace. There are many more such stories, and that's why we need workplace laws that promote such values—and that's what this bill, the Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Building Cooperative Workplaces No. 1) Bill 2026, is about. There is dignity in work. On average, we spend about a third of our lives at work, and that equates to roughly 90,000 hours. While this reality often sparks discussions about work-life balance, meaning, purpose and burnout, employment can also provide critical financial independence, social cohesion and a sense of purpose.

According to the ABS, there are currently 14.73 million people employed in this country. Governments can play an active role in making sure workplaces are safe, jobs are secure and wages are fair. In this government's first term, workplace reforms have been the most significant since the Fair Work Act commenced almost 17 years ago, and these reforms have delivered on our objectives to promote job security and gender equality, get wages moving, improve workplace safety, and address loopholes that have undermined fairness in the workplace. Some of those key industrial relations achievements include criminalising wage theft. It is now a crime to intentionally underpay workers. You can get penalties of up to 10 years in prison and fines of almost $8 million for businesses. There's a right to disconnect. We can go home from work. Employees can go home from work and they have a statutory protection to refuse to monitor, read or respond to contact from employers. Pay secrecy clauses have been banned and the gender pay gap has been driven to a record low. Minimum-wage earners have seen historic boosts, resulting in substantial increases to hourly rates and the nation experiencing multiple consecutive quarters of real-wage growth.

More recently, the government supported the 4.75 per cent increase in the modern award minimum wage and a six per cent increase to the national minimum wage, which means national minimum wages will now be almost $1,005 per week, or $26.44 an hour. This month, the government also announced a $3.6 billion, two-year extension to the work retention payment to continue subsidising a historic 15 per cent pay rise for early childhood educators. Starting in July, the payment will also be available to family day care and the home care sector. Combined with minimum-wage adjustments, this ensures a typical full-time educator sees an increase of $255 or more per week compared to December 2024, with teachers receiving up to an extra $410 per week.

The Fair Work Commission's landmark work value cases have delivered award wage increases for approximately 400,000 aged-care workers, with further phase pay jumps rolling out for nurses and direct care staff. There have been changes to help the gig economy and labour hire protections. New standards ensure same job, same pay for labour hire workers, and they've introduced a baseline protection and standard-setting powers for gig workers. Laws have expanded the scope for multi-employer agreements, helping small businesses and workers in fragmented industries negotiate enterprise agreements collectively. The government changed the definition of 'casual employment', offering clearer pathways for casuals to convert to permanent roles should they desire to do so, and we saw the abolition of the Australian Building and Construction Commission and the Registered Organisations Commission.

These are big changes that the government has implemented since coming into power in 2022, and with this bill our government builds on those reforms with a package of practical measures to further improve the operation of the workplace relations system and to support more cooperative and productive workplaces. These include amendments designed to: enable the Fair Work Commission to more effectively perform its vital function; support good-faith bargaining which delivers benefits for employees and employers alike, not to mention for our economy; ensure road transport contractors can access protections with the new fit-for-purpose high-income threshold'; clarify reporting requirements for the CFMEU administration; and support the effective operation of important tripartite advisory bodies in the workplace relations system.

This bill has six important administrative measures which will streamline the operations of the Fair Work Commission to assist it in managing its workload. The commission plays a critical role supporting workers and employers, setting minimum-wage conditions, approving workplace agreements, and resolving disputes between employers and employees. The government remains committed to ensuring it continues delivering efficient dispute resolution services for both workers and employers. The first measure removes the need for a formal hearing to decide whether an applicant in a general protection case has been dismissed. Instead, the commission will now be able to hold a conference aimed at resolving the dispute, saving time and resources for the commission, workers and their bosses. Second, the bill enables the president of the commission to delegate certain responsibilities to staff. This includes issuing basic things like certificates confirming that parties in a general protection dispute have made reasonable efforts to resolve the matter, but were unsuccessful. What these certificates do is allow the cases to move forward to consent arbitration or court proceedings. This delegation will help ensure the president and staff's time is used more efficiently.

Third, the bill grants the commission greater flexibility to decide matters on papers without requiring a formal hearing or conference and, where appropriate, with the parties' consent. Fourth, it strengthens the commission's ability to deal with vexatious or frivolous applications, including the power to prevent individuals from lodging further claims without permission. Fifth, this bill allows the commission to dismiss unfair termination and unfair deactivation applications that are frivolous or vexatious or lack reasonable prospects of success. Finally, this bill simplifies the process for obtaining supported bargaining authorisations. This change will reduce administrative burdens where a new agreement largely covers the same employees and employers as an existing one, provided the application is made within the specified timeframe of three months before or two years after the previous agreement's nominal expiry. It also allows the commission to remove employers from an authorisation, either before or after it's granted, if their circumstances have changed. All these changes may seem small, but together they will make the system fairer, easier and more efficient, not just for workers but for their bosses as well.

Bargaining is another critical component of our industrial relations system. It allows businesses and employees to design unique working arrangements like specific rostering or flexible work-from-home rights and allowances—things that fit the exact operations of the business. Again, this is good for workers, but it's also good for the business. When this government came into office in 2022, it inherited a bargaining system that had long been ineffective. In fact, participation had declined to a point where fewer than 15 per cent of employees were covered by a current federal enterprise agreement. Reforms implemented during the government's first term have revitalised the system, removing barriers and making it easier for employers and employees to negotiate agreements that suit their workplace and needs. As a result, there are now a record number of employees covered by enterprise agreements delivering genuine wage growth for workers alongside increased productivity and flexibility for employers. This is a good thing for workers, their bosses and our economy.

The bill also introduces measures to support the use of good-faith bargaining through Commonwealth spending. It enables government procurement and funding decisions, where appropriate, to give preference to employers that have negotiated agreements in good faith and with genuine agreement. Despite what the member for Flinders was saying, importantly, this bill does not mandate this approach. Decisions on when and how it should be applied are carefully considered as part of the development of the secure Australian jobs code, alongside existing requirements to ensure value for money and the delivery of high-quality, timely outcomes. All Commonwealth entities will continue to operate in accordance with the Commonwealth Procurement Rules and the Commonwealth grant rules and guidelines.

I now want to cover two key sectors that are also covered in the bill. The first is road transport contractors. In 2024, this government introduced new protections through the Fair Work Commission for truck drivers and small road transport businesses, safeguarding them from unfair contract terminations and inequitable contract terms. Our truck drivers drive our goods around our country; we need a viable transport system. However, access to these protections is currently restricted by a high-income threshold, and, due to the significant operating costs faced by road transport contractors—such as fuel expenses and vehicle maintenance, particularly for long-distance owner-drivers—the existing threshold does not adequately reflect their circumstances. This reform will establish a separate, more appropriate high-income threshold for road transport contractors, ensuring hardworking Australian truck drivers and small transport businesses can access protections against unfair termination and unfair contract terms. This recognises that truckies have high out-of-pocket costs and conventional high-income thresholds are not fit for purpose. We will consult on what the new threshold should be.

Second is the reporting requirements for the CFMEU. The Australian Labor government acted decisively by legislating for the appointment of an administrator to the Construction and General division of the CFMEU. This government will not tolerate corruption, criminality or violence in any workplace, and that includes the construction industry. The union movement doesn't want this either. But what we will tolerate is a strong and effective union movement that looks after workers and stops them being exploited.

You can tell from the story I started these comments with that I am a proud unionist. I come from a union family. I see what a positive difference they make to individuals and their families. The problems we see in the construction industry are not the norm in the union movement. They've been there a long time, and they will not be solved overnight, but the government is taking decisive action. Mr Mark Irving KC has made significant progress in improving the culture of the construction industry and addressing criminality and corruption with the CFMEU, and this bill provides the administrator with an appropriate timeframe to prepare and submit the required biennial financial report to the minister under the Fair Work Act.

Lastly, the government has strongly supported cooperative and productive approaches to workplace relations, including through tripartite arrangements that bring together employers, workers and government. One such tripartite body is the National Construction Industry Forum, which provides advice to the Australian government on matters relating to building and construction, a big part of our economy at the moment. The bill makes minor updates to the ministerial memberships of the NCIF and allows travel allowances for non-ministerial members to be determined in line with Remuneration Tribunal determinations. It also confirms that Road Transport Advisory Group members are eligible to receive travel allowances consistent with other consultative bodies and clarifies that ATAG members, including the chair and the subcommittee members, are not otherwise entitled to remuneration or additional allowances.

Our landmark secure jobs, better pay bills and closing loophole reforms laid the foundations for a strong and efficient industrial relations system, and this bill builds on that. This bill reflects the government's ongoing commitment to ensuring our workplace relations framework supports cooperative and productive workplaces, the kinds of workplaces that work for businesses, for workers and for our economy. Labor is the party of workers. We're proud of that. The Australian Labor Party was born out of the labour movement. We will always stand up for working people, and I commend this bill to the House.

Kate Chaney (Curtin, Independent) | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Building Cooperative Workplaces No. 1) Bill 2026. This bill bundles together measures with very different impacts. It gives the Fair Work Commission tools to manage a rising tide of applications, a tide now driven in part by paid agents and by artificial intelligence generating claims at volume. It streamlines how dismissal disputes are handled, restoring a more efficient process. It allows the commission to decide certain matters on the papers—that is, on written submissions without a hearing—where both parties agree. It also establishes a separate, more appropriate income threshold for low paid owner-drivers in road transport, whose high operating costs can make them look better paid than they really are, giving them access to unfair termination and unfair contract protections that they would otherwise be denied. And the bill tidies up the timing of CFMEU construction division financial reports.

I'm broadly supportive of these measures. They address real pressures and they deserve to be passed. The commission is under genuine strain, and these measures respond to it directly. Until the 2020 Federal Court decision in Coles Supply Chain Pty Ltd v Milford, also called Milford, when a worker brought a general protections claim and the employer argued that no dismissal had actually occurred, the commission could simply move the matter to conciliation and try to resolve it. After Milford, the commission first had to run a full arbitrated hearing just to decide the threshold question of whether a dismissal had happened at all before it could even begin to deal with the dispute, and that's slow and expensive for everyone. This bill restores the earlier, more sensible process: the commission can proceed straight to conciliation, and the question of whether a dismissal occurred can still be worked through there, or later in arbitration or in court if the matter can't be resolved. Empowering the commission to dismiss frivolous, vexatious or hopeless applications and to rein in repeat applicants who clog the system is a reasonable response to a real problem.

I don't pretend that these measures are cost-free. They touch on procedural rights, and the government acknowledges as much. But they come with safeguards. Vexatious orders may be made only by a full bench. Matters proceed on the papers only with the parties' consent, and judicial review remains.

On balance, this is the unglamorous legislative work of making an institution function, and it deserves to pass. But—and there is a 'but'—one part of this bill is doing a great deal of quiet work for a so-called efficiency measure. There's been a longstanding prohibition on discriminating between employers based on the industrial instruments covering their workers. But part 9 of this bill creates an exemption to this prohibition. That means the Commonwealth could give preference to businesses whose employees are covered by an enterprise agreement, often a union agreement, when awarding grants and contracts. And it potentially reaches down supply chains. A single Commonwealth project could impose these conditions on every business beneath it.

This is a significant change in how we decide how taxpayer money is spent. Bundling it into a bill that is otherwise about commission housekeeping, under the reassuring banner of 'building cooperative workplaces', understates what it does. This is precisely the kind of opaque process I've consistently criticised in this place. And there's not a lot of relevant detail about how this might work that's actually written into the bill. The bill tells us that the Commonwealth may preference employers that are covered by an enterprise agreement, but the crucial detail of exactly which contractual arrangements this power reaches and how far down a supply chain it extends isn't settled in the act itself; it's left to be determined by the minister, by legislative instrument.

So parliament is being asked to approve the principle while the substance—the part that determines who is caught and how heavily—is deferred to ministerial decision after the fact. A change of this significance deserves far more scrutiny. If the Commonwealth wants the power to steer public money in this way so it's spent on the basis of how businesses contract with their employees rather than value for money or ability to fulfil the contract, the boundaries of that power should be debated and fixed here in the primary legislation, not filled in by instrument once the bill has passed.

Industry has raised serious concerns about this aspect of the bill. The Australian Industry Group warns that it undermines freedom of association, the right of workers to join a union or not. They point to a parade of scandals and billions wasted where procurement was bent to industrial objectives at a state level. The Business Council and Master Builders go further, to integrity.

We don't have to reach back very far for the relevant lesson. Geoffrey Watson SC, examining the construction sector, found that some enterprise agreements were bought for cash and awarded to criminals and that practices like these could drive legitimate businesses out of the market altogether. This is not a hypothetical risk; it's a documented finding about the very sector this measure would touch most directly. The timing makes it sharper still. The CFMEU's construction division is at this moment under administration, in fact dealt with separately in this bill. So, at the same time as we're cleaning up after corruption in construction enterprise agreements, part 9 would elevate the role of these agreements in the awarding of public contracts and grants.

If public money is to be steered towards companies that hold a particular type of agreement in a sector with this recent history, the safeguards against that money flowing to the wrong hands should be spelled out, and here they are not. This also lands awkwardly against the government's own statement on 1 May this year that it had no intention of requiring union agreements as a condition of construction funding. The government must reconcile that commitment with what part 9 actually does. If businesses are complying with our very complex industrial relations laws then they should be able to compete with other businesses on a level playing field for government contracts on the basis of their ability to fulfil that contract and give value for money. The government has said it may carve out the construction industry, but that's not what's being put before the House and not what I'm being asked to vote on.

So this is a bill of good measures and one serious problem, and my position follows from that. I support the objectives of the commission efficiency reforms; the road transport income threshold, which is a fair fix for low-paid owners-drivers; and the supported bargaining streamlining, which is a sensible administrative simplification. I'd back these readily on their own. But the principle underpinning part 9, that government should discriminate on the basis of the existence of an enterprise agreement, appears to be targeted at elevating the role of unions. For example, small and medium-sized businesses that make up the overwhelming majority of the construction industry largely operate under awards, not enterprise agreements. They should be treated no less favourably than those with union-negotiated enterprise agreements.

So I move a second reading amendment as circulated in my name:

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House:

(1) notes that:

(a) the bill contains a range of measures, most of which are sensible and warrant support, including efficiency reforms to the operation of the Fair Work Commission, a fairer high income threshold for road transport contractors, and administrative changes to reporting requirements;

(b) Part 9 of Schedule 1 would allow the Commonwealth, and parties within a Commonwealth contractual chain, to discriminate between businesses in awarding grants or procuring goods and services on the basis of their enterprise agreement arrangements;

(c) the integrity of public spending depends on decisions about grants and procurement being made transparently and on their merits, including value for money, capability, delivery and compliance, rather than on factors unrelated to a business's ability to do the work;

(d) Part 9 would weaken that principle by making a business's industrial arrangements a permissible basis for preferencing in the allocation of public money; and

(e) these provisions would also confer a broad power on the Minister to extend or modify their operation by legislative instrument, with limited parliamentary oversight; and

(2) calls on the Government to remove such measures from the bill that would allow the Commonwealth to discriminate against businesses on the basis of their enterprise agreement arrangements".

This amendment does not decline the bill a second reading—the sensible measures in it deserve to pass—but it puts on the record my concern with part 9, which is that allowing a business's enterprise agreement arrangements to determine its access to grants and contracts cuts against the principle that public money should be allocated transparently and on merit—on value, capability, delivery and compliance—and that these provisions, with their broad ministerial power to extend their reach by instrument, should be removed from the bill. I will not let a significant corruption-sensitive procurement change ride through on the coat-tails of sensible reform. If this procurement prioritisation remains, I'll vote against this bill.

Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the amendment seconded?

Helen Haines (Indi, Independent) | Link to this | Hansard source

():  I second the member for Curtin's amendment, and I have some brief remarks. Like the member for Curtin, I support many aspects of the Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Building Cooperative Workplaces No. 1) Bill 2026, including changes to allow the Fair Work Commission to operate more efficiently and establishing a new high-income threshold for road transport contractors.

However, this bill also amends existing antidiscrimination provisions so that the government can give preference to employers whose employees are covered by an enterprise agreement in contracts, procurements and grants of financial assistance. I'm not opposed to enterprise agreements, but this bill would effectively enable the government to force employers to make agreements with unions if they want to have any chance of getting a tender or contract. This is ripe for misuse. It raises significant integrity and corruption concerns, especially in light of what we've seen with the CFMEU in Queensland and Victoria.

In relation to grants, I'm especially worried that this would undermine the principles of open, merit-based competitive funding rounds. Organisations who seek funding in good faith deserve to have their applications assessed on their merits alone. Public spending should be based on need, merit, effectiveness and value for money, not on other irrelevant factors. So I join the member for Curtin in calling on the government to remove these measures from this bill.

Carina Garland (Chisholm, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I think we should all be very proud of our enterprise bargaining system in Australia, which has provided for good outcomes for workers and for employers, and we should do what we can to defend this important system. Having said that, I'm very pleased to rise to speak on this important legislation today, which is legislation that builds on the Albanese Labor government's previous and important workplace reforms. Of course, ensuring that we have a strong workplace relations system has long been the focus of the Australian Labor Party.

The purpose of the Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Building Cooperative Workplaces No. 1) Bill 2026 is to amend the Fair Work Act to make improvements to industrial relations arrangements. The building cooperative workplaces bill progresses important improvements to the workplace relations framework. Our landmark secure jobs, better pay and closing loopholes reforms laid the foundations, and I am pleased to inform the House that our work on these important reforms will continue with the passage of this bill.

On this side of the House, we are absolutely committed to ensuring our workplace relations framework supports cooperative and productive workplaces. Unfortunately, many of the speakers on the other side of the chamber have missed the important emphasis on cooperative workplaces in the title of this bill. Cooperative workplaces include the kind of workplaces that we know will work for businesses, workers and the broader economy for our communities. It's important to highlight that our reforms are essential in ensuring that our workplace relations framework continues to be fit for purpose, continues to deliver fairer wages and secure jobs not just in my electorate of Chisholm but right across Australia.

Part of delivering these reforms also means ensuring that the Fair Work Commission processes continue to be effective and efficient. I'm proud to say that this legislation includes an amendment to enable progress to be made on our election commitment to develop the secure Australian jobs code. I think this code has been misunderstood by a number of those speaking on the opposite side of the chamber in that it focuses on making sure that taxpayer funds go to support good, secure jobs in our communities. I don't think that's controversial at all.

We know the Fair Work Commission plays a critical role as our national workplace relations tribunal, and our government is committed to ensuring that it continues to provide efficient dispute resolution services to workers and employers across Australia. One of the realities that we have come to understand about the Fair Work Commission's workload is that it has been really steadily increasing in recent years. As the minister has previously outlined in this place, the emerging challenges such as the rise of artificial intelligence, the prevalence of paid agents and the flow-on implications of the recent Milford court decision have been impacting the commission's processing times and requirements. Significantly, the measures included in this bill are designed to assist the commission to better manage its workload and to support a more efficient and effective workplace relations framework. Of course, we seek to do this without reducing protections for workers.

Through this legislation we will save not only the Fair Work Commission's time but also that of relevant parties involved in matters before the commission. We'll also save them money. We'll do this by ensuring that the commission can deal with the substance of a general protections dismissal matter without first having to deal with jurisdictional issues. This element of the bill seeks to deal with the unintended consequences of a Federal Court decision. I've referred to it already, the Milford decision, which is placing unnecessary additional burden on the Fair Work Commission as well as on employers, workers and their unions.

It will allow the president of the commission to delegate their power to certify that a general protections matter is unlikely to be resolved by conciliation. It will allow the commission to dismiss unfair termination and unfair deactivation applications that are frivolous or vexatious or have no reasonable prospect of success. It will enable the commission to prevent vexatious litigants from making further applications, and it will expand the circumstances in which the commission can decide a matter on the papers where the parties consent without holding a hearing or conducting a conference. It will also allow the recommencement of supported bargaining without the need for a new authorisation, where an authorisation has already been made less than two years ago. Again, this will save the Fair Work Commission and parties involved both time and money.

Our government has committed to develop a secure Australian jobs code to ensure that Commonwealth government spending supports secure jobs and fair conditions in all of our communities right across Australia. We know that enterprise agreements that are genuinely agreed and negotiated in good faith can be a really important, transparent and effective way of delivering secure jobs and fair conditions for workers as well as delivering flexibility and productivity for employers. Subsequently, the bill under consideration will allow the Commonwealth to preference enterprise agreements that have been negotiated in good faith and genuinely agreed, where appropriate to do so, building cooperative workplaces as the title of the bill suggests. This is the right thing to do.

Of course, value for money, quality and timeliness will absolutely remain front and centre of all government spending decisions and considerations and, as already announced, a different approach will be taken in the construction industry. Consistent with the recommendations of the NCIF, the government has announced consultation on the development of strong standalone standards aimed at ensuring government spending drives lawful and productive behaviour in the construction industry. As the minister has already made crystal clear, the government has no intention of replicating BPIC and under no circumstances will employers be required to be covered by an enterprise agreement covered by a union as a condition of receiving government funding.

The bill will make minor but important changes to support the government's tripartite National Construction Industry Forum and the CFMEU administration in their ongoing and really important work of reforming the construction industry. Clarifying the travel allowance rate for NCIF members, replacing Minister Ayres with Minister O'Neill to reflect machinery-of-government changes and adding Minister Giles as a permanent member due to the strong skills component of the forum's Blueprint for the future is also really essential here. We're also clarifying the CFMEU administrator's biannual financial reporting requirements, which currently require a report effectively immediately at the conclusion of a given financial year.

In this bill, we're also committed to ensuring truckies get a fair go. The bill will allow a new road transport industry high-income threshold to be made, and that will apply to contractors in the road transport industry, which we know is an incredibly important industry to our nation. This recognises that truck drivers have high out-of-pocket costs and that conventional high-income thresholds are simply not fit for purpose for this sector. We will consult on what this new threshold should be. That should come as no surprise, because our government has worked really hard to consult with relevant parties when making important decisions like this. The intention here is to ensure that more truck drivers can access our quick and easy process to challenge an unfair contract in the Fair Work Commission.

This clearly builds on the important reforms we've already made to back truck drivers and our trucking industry, including the fairer fuel act, which creates an urgent pathway with a high threshold that allows truck drivers and transport operators to argue for a fairer share. This is in addition to our world-leading laws laying the foundations for gig workers to achieve, for the first time, minimum standards.

It should come as absolutely no surprise to anybody in this place that the Albanese Labor government stands with workers, communities and employers to build cooperative workplaces that seek to provide good outcomes for workers, businesses and our communities. We know that secure jobs drive participation in communities. I spoke about this in my very first speech—that, when people have certainty over hours and wages, they can make commitments to their local communities. They can put down roots. They can know that on their weekends they'll have time to give to their local sporting clubs. They can be involved in local parent groups. They can make those kinds of decisions because they have the security of a job that they can count on. This is an extension of the work we as a government already did in our first term and are building on here in our second term.

It should, as I've said before in my speech today, be uncontroversial that a government would seek to ensure that Commonwealth funds are able to provide good, secure jobs for people in our communities. This should be something that we all aspire to achieve for every worker in our electorates. It is disappointing that some in this chamber don't understand this point or seem not to understand this point. I hope that we can continue to work as a parliament, and certainly we on this side of the House will continue to work as a government, to provide good, secure, well-paying jobs for workers. We know this is the foundation of building a good life in this country, and I'm very, very proud to be part of a government that understands how important this objective is.

Allegra Spender (Wentworth, Independent) | Link to this | Hansard source

The Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Building Cooperative Workplaces No. 1) Bill 2026 makes several changes to the Fair Work Act and related legislation. Most I support; one I specifically do not.

This bill ensures road transport contractors can access workplace protections through a new industry-specific high-income threshold that reflects their actual cost structure. It fixes a practical impossibility in the CFMEU's administrator reporting requirements. And, significantly, it enables the Fair Work Commission to manage a case load that has grown by 70 per cent in three years. The commission's president, Justice Hatcher, has said publicly that this surge is principally driven by the use of AI tools by potential litigants. Research presented at Senate estimates in June this year found that 40 to 50 per cent of applicants reported using AI to prepare their applications. Paid agents lodging speculative claims are compounding the problem.

The bill responds by reversing the Federal Court's decision in Coles Supply Chain Pty Ltd v Milford, which required the commission to hold a formal hearing on whether a dismissal actually occurred before it could even begin conciliation. That procedural requirement turned many matters into two hearings instead of one. The bill also expands powers to dismiss frivolous and vexatious applications, creates a vexatious litigant order, allows matters to be determined on the papers with the parties consent and permits greater delegation of procedural functions to commission staff. These are sensible reforms and I support them.

But within these practical measures is something that has nothing to do with practicality and everything to do with industrial politics and is one that I reject. Part 9 creates new exceptions for the Fair Work Act's prohibitions on discrimination. It gives the Commonwealth a legal basis to favour one business over another—not because of their capability, not because of compliance, not because of price but because of the industrial instrument that covers its workforce. A business with a union covered enterprise agreement could be preferred over an identical competitor that pays the same wages and meets every legal obligation but whose agreement does not name a union or that relies on an award, as most small businesses do because the industrial relations system, the awards and the EBAs are so complicated that it is extremely difficult for smaller businesses to negotiate EBAs.

The powers are broad. They flow into Commonwealth linked supply chains. The minister can determine, by legislative instrument, additional contractual arrangements that fall within the exception. The explanatory memorandum gives no guidance on scope. The secure Australian jobs code is still in development. The practical reach of this measure is entirely uncertain and will sit well beyond the ongoing oversight of parliament.

Now, I support genuine enterprise bargaining. I wish it was actually easier for companies and unions and workers to come up with agreements that benefit them both, and I continue to urge, as I have since the day I was elected, the government to help people simplify the awards because that would make it easier for people to come up with enterprise bargaining agreements that are genuinely beneficial to all parties and that would genuinely actually improve the lives of workers. But what I oppose is a government using its growing economic footprint to compel a particular industrial model without adequate safeguards against corruption that has already been documented in this system, and in a way that is going to make it harder for smaller businesses and newer businesses to potentially access government contracts. I reject that completely.

The contradiction is striking. On 1 May this year, five weeks before the bill was introduced, the minister stated:

The government has no intention of requiring employers to enter an enterprise agreement covered by a registered employee organisation as a condition of receiving Commonwealth government funding in the construction industry.

And:

… has no intention of replicating Queensland's former Best Practice Industry Conditions Scheme.

Five weeks later, we've got this legislation and it gives the government exactly this power. The government will say: 'Well, we don't have to require it. This is not a requirement; it just is a consideration.' Just think of how this is going to play out. If this is something that could be positively taken into account, what do you think businesses will think they need to do? They will obviously think, 'Oh, well, if some organisations will get preferenced if they have an EBA or the government can preference them because they have an EBA versus others, well then I need to enter an EBA.' What do you think unions will do? They will say, 'We need to have EBAs.' Again, I support this, but you might as well say that you require it, because, if this power that the government is intent on creating is used, that will be the difference that it makes.

Let's put this in an economic context. Productivity is flatlining. Businesses are facing compounding pressures—inflation, regulatory expansion, complexity in industrial relations—which this government has not addressed. Even when it would be beneficial to workers to simplify the awards, the government has failed to do so. The answer is not more government prescriptions attached to a growing share of government directed spending.

This concern is not hypothetical. The Watson report, Rotting from the top, examined the CFMEU in the Victorian construction industry. Watson found the enterprise agreement system had been thoroughly corrupted by what he called 'old-fashioned pay-to-play corruption'. There was no genuine bargaining. Agreements were awarded to friends of union officials and to known criminals in return for cash. Labour hire agreements were sold for up to $1 million. The CFMEU punished its enemies by refusing to issue agreements with no reason and no review. Watson found that the denial of an agreement could drive a decent contractor out of business.

Watson conservatively estimated that this corruption cost Victorian taxpayers $15 billion. A 15 per cent cost increase applied to the $100 billion big build. Fifteen billion dollars—that is what happens when enterprise agreements become commercial assets to be bought and sold, rather than genuine instruments of collective bargaining, and that is the system that this bill proposes to reward with preferential access to public money.

Commonwealth government spending for 2026-27 is $830 billion, which is 26.8 per cent of GDP. That is a record. Those billions are drawn from the taxes and borrowings of Australians, who expect it to be spent in their interests. Every dollar that doesn't go as far as it could is inflationary. In that environment, procurement cannot be filtered through an industrial relations test, and the Queensland experience shows where this leads. It's all very well for the minister to say, 'Well, we're not going to do this.' This is exactly the legislation that provides the environment in which the minister can do this.

The best-practice industry conditions scheme used procurement policy to embed preferred industrial conditions into government funded construction. That sounds very similar to what we're trying to do here. The Queensland Productivity Commission found that the BPIC likely reduced construction productivity, which fell by nine per cent over six years. The commission modelled that, if left in place till 2029-2030, it could have increased project costs by 10 to 25 per cent, reducing housing supply by up to 26,500 homes and imposing net community costs of $5.7 billion to $20.6 billion. The Queensland government itself acknowledged that BPIC contributed to delays and cost overruns. It was paused in November 2024 and then permanently abolished. This bill creates a similar risk at the Commonwealth level.

I have heard some of the people opposite argue for this bill on the basis that people should have secure jobs and that that is a positive thing. Now, I support secure jobs, but we have an economy and a lot of industrial relations legislation that enshrines a lot of secure jobs across the economy. The government doesn't need to enshrine secure jobs through its own procurement practices. It can employ its people how it wants. It has the overarching environment for the economy, but it doesn't need to add this legislation, and it doesn't need to exclude small businesses or make it harder for small businesses to access government contracts.

I genuinely say: if you've got a problem with secure jobs, show me in the economy where you want to make those jobs more secure, rather than using industrial relations instruments, because there is a real risk here of corruption. We have seen this play out. In saying, 'We're going to exclude the construction industry,' there is a real risk of corruption, and the government has not got the safeguards in place to make sure that this doesn't happen. To then provide this and say, 'We'll carve this bit out. It will be okay,' is naive and is not in the interest of the Australian taxpayer. The level of organised crime and issues related to the CFMEU is an enormous burden on the entire country. Government should be very, very cautious about going ahead with legislation that could add to corruption in the procurement of public services, and this is quite reckless.

Again, I support the elements of this bill that strengthen the Fair Work Commission, protect road transport contractors and fix the CFMEU reporting requirements; those reforms are practical and proportionate. But I cannot support legislation that creates the legal framework to preference union interests in the allocation of public money—not when documented corruption has turned parts of the enterprise agreement system into a vehicle for organised crime; not when the government said, five weeks before introducing this bill, that they didn't have any intention of doing what this bill empowers—or allows them, at least—to do; and not when one jurisdiction that tried a comparable scheme found it destroyed productivity, inflated costs and reduced housing supply.

Incentives matter. When access to public money depends on having the right enterprise agreement, you create the conditions for the very corruption Watson documented: agreements as currency, access as leverage and corruption as the cost of doing business. At the same time, you exclude those businesses who, because of the labyrinthine complexity of the EBAs and the award system which the government has failed miserably to deal with, find it much harder to develop EBAs. So I will not support that, and the public of Australia deserves better.

Ash Ambihaipahar (Barton, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Building Cooperative Workplaces No. 1) Bill 2026, and I do so with a particular sense of purpose. Before I came to this place, I spent more than 10 years in the workplace relations and employment law trenches. I worked for the Electrical Trades Union, standing beside electricians and apprentices who had been shortchanged, underpaid or dismissed without cause. I also worked with the Nurses and Midwives Association, representing nurses working double shifts in understaffed wards who came to me pretty much exhausted and afraid of what would happen if they did speak up. I also worked for the Australian Hotels Association and their legal firm, advising employers in the hospitality sector—some were small, family-run operations who were trying to navigate a system that can feel complex and overwhelming. I regularly appeared in front of the Fair Work Commission as well as the Federal Circuit Court. I say this not to pad out my biography but more in relation to this particular bill not being an academic one. Every provision in it corresponds to something I have seen with my own eyes, experienced in real time and felt the weight of on behalf of real people.

Let me start with the Fair Work Commission, because I think we sometimes forget what an extraordinary institution it is and what we ask of it. When I was appearing in the commission proceedings as a young lawyer—whether it was a general protections application for an ETU member who had been sacked after raising a safety concern or an unfair dismissal matter for a hospitality business owner—I saw firsthand how important it was that the commission could operate efficiently. When a worker is dismissed, every week that passes without resolution is another week of financial stress, anxiety and uncertainty. And for employers, too—unresolved disputes hanging over a business creates uncertainty. It adds to costs and impacts operations significantly not only financially but also through the added pressure for other team members in the business. The commission's workload has grown substantially, and the bill before us identifies several new pressures: the rising prevalence of paid agents making applications of very questionable merit; the emergence of artificial intelligence being used to generate applications that are misconceived or frivolous; and consequences of the Milford decision, which has imposed significant additional procedural burdens on the commission that were never intended.

I want to speak to each of these, because each reflects something I recognise from practice. On the Milford decision—when I was appearing in general protections matters, one of the things I valued about that jurisdiction was that it was nimble. The general protection provisions of the Fair Work Act exist to protect some of the most fundamental rights of a worker: the right to exercise a workplace right, the right to take industrial action and the right to be free from adverse action. These are serious protections, but the commission's ability to deal efficiently with these matters has been disrupted by the unintended consequences of the Milford decision, which now requires the commission to address the jurisdictional issues before getting to the substance of the actual dispute. This bill corrects that, and it is the right thing to do.

On the question of artificial intelligence and misconceived applications, this is a genuinely new challenge. The bill's response is measured and very sensible. In my time at the bar table, I encountered applications that lacked merit, and that is inevitable in any legal system. Not every claim succeeds—and not every claim should—but there is a meaningful difference between a claim that fails on merits and a claim that was never a legitimate claim at all. The commission's current powers to dismiss applications that are misconceived or lacking in substance are being tested by the volume and the character of some of the applications now being generated, sometimes with the assistance of AI tools that can produce plausible-looking documents without any genuine legal foundation beneath them. The bill broadens the grounds on which the commission may dismiss such applications and, critically, enables the commission to prevent vexatious litigants from making further applications.

This is a proportionate response. It protects the integrity of the system. It protects respondents, often small businesses, from the time and cost of defending claims that should never have been brought. It frees up the commission's capacity to focus on matters that genuinely require its attention. I want to emphasise that strengthening the commission's ability to deal with vexatious or misconceived applications is not about limiting workers' access to justice; it is about protecting that access. It's ensuring that a system is not so clogged with bad-faith or AI generated noise that genuine claims cannot be heard. The workers I represented deserved a commission that had the time and resources to properly hear their cases, and so do the workers of today.

The bill also removes a Howard-era prohibition on the Commonwealth considering whether to preference employers with enterprise agreements when making funding and procurement decisions, and I want to spend a moment on this because I think it goes to something fundamental about what enterprise agreements are and what they represent. In my experience, I've been able to see both sides of this table. A genuine enterprise agreement, bargained in good faith, is one of the most effective mechanisms we have for delivering fair wages, secure jobs and workplace flexibility simultaneously. When I worked at the ETU, we bargained enterprise agreements that gave electricians certainty about their rosters, their allowances and other employment conditions. When I worked at the AHA, we helped employers, particularly small businesses, use enterprise agreements to structure their workforce in ways that made business sense while providing workers with above-award conditions and attracting skilled employees.

I must highlight that I heard the contributions from the member for Wentworth, and I refute some of those bold assertions by the member for Wentworth. I've had really good experiences of the use of EBAs, particularly for small businesses. Enterprise agreements work because they require genuine engagement between employers and employees. They are transparent, they are registered, they are enforceable and they create a shared stake in the success of that enterprise.

The previous government's prohibition on the Commonwealth considering enterprise agreements in procurement decisions was a peculiar difference, a legislative restraint that prevented the Australian government from using its own purchasing power to support the very outcomes it said it valued. This bill removes that prohibition. It does not mandate that the Commonwealth must preference enterprise agreement employers; it simply removes the legal barrier to doing so where appropriate. The Secure Australian Jobs Code will develop the policy framework for how and when such preferencing occurs, and that is the right sequencing: remove the legal obstacle now and develop the policy settings carefully.

The bill also contains provisions supporting the National Construction Industry Forum and clarifying aspects of the CFMEU administration's reporting obligations. The construction industry has had troubled periods, and I think it's fair to say that is something that we can agree on. But the tripartite National Construction Industry Forum, bringing together governments, employers and unions, represents a serious attempt to chart a different course, one that is based on lawful behaviour, genuine cooperation and a shared commitment to a construction industry that is productive, safe and fair.

Minor but meaningful amendments in this bill clarifying travel allowances for NCIF members, updating ministerial membership to reflect mechanism-of-government changes and adding the Minister for Skills and Training as a permanent member reflect the genuine work the forum is doing and the importance that government places on it. The skills component of the forum's Blueprint for the future is not incidental; it is very much central. A construction industry that invests in training, apprenticeships and the development of its workforce is one that can be genuinely productive and genuinely safe.

Finally, I just want to speak to the road transport provisions because I think they are something very much overlooked in the broader discussion of this bill, and they should not be. We know truckies occupy a unique position in our economy and in our national life. They are the people who move our goods, stock our shelves and keep our supply chains running. They are often owner-operators or small contractors. They are their own boss in name but are often subject to commercial pressures that leave them with little real bargaining power. The cost structures they face are genuinely different from other industries'. With fuel, maintenance and insurance compliance, the out-of-pocket expenses of running a truck are significant and ongoing.

The existing high-income threshold that determines access to the Fair Work Commission's unfair contract jurisdiction was designed for employees, not for contractors who may have a turnover that looks substantial on paper but a take-home income that tells a very different story. So this bill will allow a new road transport industry high-income threshold to be developed in consultation, one that actually reflects the economic realities of this industry. I think of contractors, small operators, who have taken on work under contracts that gave them very little protection and found themselves locked in arrangements that were generally unfair but with no practical avenue to challenge them. This reform changes that. It says to those contractors that they deserve access to the same quick and accessible process that others can use to challenge an unfair contract.

When I left practice and came to this place, I brought with me a conviction that the workplace relations system is one of the most significant things a government manages. It shapes the conditions under which millions of Australians spend a third of their waking lives. It determines whether work is secure or precarious, fairly rewarded or exploited, safe or dangerous. This bill is definitely not a headline-grabbing piece of legislation, but it is exactly the kind of careful, evidence based, consultatively developed reform that makes a system that works better and that ensures the institutions and mechanisms we rely on are fit for purpose.

I think of workers I represented—electricians and nurses. I think of hospitality and hotel employers I advised and supported who wanted to do the right thing and needed the system to help them do it. I think this bill is for all of them. It is for the Fair Work Commission, which needs these tools to manage its workload and deliver timely justice, it's for the workers, who need the commission to hear their cases on merit without unnecessary delay, it is for the truckies, who deserve a fair go when they challenge an unfair contract, and it is for the principle that government procurement, the spending of public money, should, where appropriate, promote the standards we want to set across the economy.

Anne Webster (Mallee, National Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Development, Local Government and Territories) | Link to this | Hansard source

At a time when Australia faces clear productivity challenges, this parliament should be asking a simple question of every piece of legislation—will it lift productivity or will it lower it? Productivity is not an abstract economic concept. It is the foundation of higher wages, lower costs, which Australians need during Labor's homegrown cost-of-living crisis, and stronger living standards for Australian families. The procurement provisions in this bill fail the productivity test. Australia's 20-year average labour productivity growth has fallen from 1.8 to 0.8 per cent, more than half. The Reserve Bank of Australia has revised medium-term productivity growth down to 0.7 per cent per year. Under Labor, five of the last seven quarters have seen negative GDP, gross domestic product, per capita. What that means in everyday terms is that, even as the economy struggles to grow, population growth is running too fast—migration, anyone? Living standards are also slipping consequently.

Despite lagging productivity and falling living standards, Labor's plan is to abandon the fight against the inflation dragon, step aside from governing and let unions like the CFMEU take charge. That is what the Albanese government is wanting to do—bring the CFMEU to Canberra, because that has worked so well in Victoria! This bill does two very different things. It is yet another cunning Labor piece of 'wedge-islation', a term that the current prime minister used when he was Leader of the Opposition. And he stated repeatedly that he would not be doing this very thing—wedging a less controversial aspect of the IR law with a highly controversial one. The PM misled Australia again by promising not to wedge the coalition in bringing legislation to the House with tricky double purposes, but here we are.

First, and less controversially, this bill introduces practical reforms to help the Fair Work Commission manage a growing and increasingly complex caseload—fair enough. The coalition does not have a problem with this aspect. The evidence is clear: the Fair Work Commission's workload is projected to increase by over 70 per cent within three years, with 40 to 50 per cent of applications involving AI assisted claims. In that environment, measures to streamline processes, dismiss unmeritorious claims earlier and improve administrative efficiency are sensible reforms. As I say, we in the coalition support them.

But the second part of the bill is entirely different. The bill would allow the Albanese government to preference employers with enterprise agreements in procurement, in grants, in other contracts, preferring businesses that have—get this!—union arrangements. What a surprise! What a surprise to everyone on the coalition benches! 'Nothing to see here.' Let's be honest: this provision has nothing to do with productivity or efficiency; it is a kickback to Labor's union backers. Labor proposes using taxpayer funded procurement to advance the union franchise. In Albanese's socialist dystopia, this is a fundamental—

Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I ask the member to refer to members of this chamber by their correct title.

Anne Webster (Mallee, National Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Development, Local Government and Territories) | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, Deputy Speaker. In the Albanese Labor government's socialist dystopia, this is a fundamental shift in how government spends taxpayer money. Currently, the law prohibits discrimination against businesses based on whether their employees are covered by particular industrial instruments. This bill changes that. This is Labor doing Labor things.

As one of my many constituent small-business owners said to me earlier this month, 'We don't need this; employers already have agreements with staff.' Labor wants to explicitly empower the Commonwealth to favour businesses with union backed enterprise agreements when allocating contracts and grants. Critically, those preferences will flow through supply chains. So that's Mallee's local construction firms, family owned civil contractors, telecommunications installation and maintenance providers, machinery or service firms, employment service providers. The hammer blow of Labor's cave-in to the unions in Commonwealth procurement will hit regional businesses and communities.

This is not a minor change. It is a structural shift in how taxpayer money is distributed across the economy. When access to government work no longer depends on capability, efficiency or value for money but rather on industrial alignment, guess what? Productivity suffers. Let's imagine what this means for Snowy 2.0, already a disastrous budget blowout—unconscionably over budget. And what do the Prime Minister and the Minister for Climate Change and Energy want to do? They want to bring in the CFMEU. We all know how that will work. Resources are no longer allocated to the most efficient businesses. They are allocated to the ones with unions most embedded in their operations—in other words, the big institutions with sweetheart union deals. That leads directly to higher input costs, reduced competition and lower economic efficiency. When productivity falls, Australian households ultimately pay the price through higher taxes, higher infrastructure costs and higher cost-of-living pressures. You can imagine, with Snowy 2.0, how high electricity bills will become.

This is the very painful lived experience in my home state of Victoria, with the Allan Labor government a puppet for the disgraced CFMEU, with its tentacles all through the big cost blowouts of the Big Build, including the suburban rail loop, adding to taxpayer costs. Remember: the Watson inquiry indicated $15 billion of taxpayer money to additional costs in major projects in Victoria due to the CFMEU, with suggestions that it could be significantly higher.

On Monday, Robert Gottliebsen warned that embedding union driven structures into major infrastructure projects such as Snowy 2.0 could cost as much as $1 trillion in additional network charges for energy consumers. We've seen the energy minister hopping about this morning with regard to the proposed new energy bill supply charges from 1 July. Well, that will pale into insignificance if the CFMEU based costs embedded in Snowy 2.0 are passed on to consumers. The CFMEU's involvement in Snowy 2.0 will significantly increase long-term network costs, driven by cost-plus contracts, governance arrangements and reduced incentives for cost control. That is where bad bills like this one—bad 'wedge-islation'—hit working families through higher costs in their energy bills and everywhere in the economy when they go to the supermarket checkout or try to build a home.

Labor takes Australians for fools, but I can tell you Australians are totally awake to the deceit, failures and incompetence of this Labor government and this Prime Minister. A constituent from Horsham wrote to me recently and said:

… deeply concerned by the serious and ongoing allegations of corruption, fraud, and organised criminal involvement linked to major infrastructure projects under the Big Build, and the role of the CFMEU within that system. The volume of reporting, arrests, and independent findings now in the public domain paints a picture of systemic misconduct that appears to have gone unchecked for years—at enormous cost to taxpayers and to public trust in government. The suggestion that criminal networks were able to operate within publicly funded projects is profoundly alarming.

I agree with him.

Union driven plummeting productivity concerns are not theoretical; industry is raising it right now. The Business Council of Australia's Bran Black warned on 4 June about the proposals in this bill:

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.

Further, he said:

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

I couldn't agree with him more.

We already have excessive government spending driving inflation. Remember the inflation dragon the Treasurer promised to slay? He's given up. He's handed control over to Labor's union masters as if they will be the dragon slayer. But, no, they will only fan the flames from this dragon's mouth. The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry went further, stating that 'up to 99 per cent of Australian-employing businesses would be sidelined.'

Around 982,500 of Australia's 994,000 employing businesses do not have enterprise agreements. This exposes Labor's poorly veiled pathological hatred of small business. If this bill passes, the overwhelming majority of Australian businesses, most of them small or family run, will face a major structural disadvantage in securing Commonwealth work.

Small businesses are not marginal participants in the economy. They are its backbone, and they are already under pressure. Recent evidence shows that 64 per cent of businesses say industrial relations changes have made running their businesses harder, and around one-quarter say it's harder to grow or adapt under Labor. At the same time, many businesses are spending over $20,000 a year simply on compliance costs. Productivity depends on small businesses being able to innovate, compete and allocate resources efficiently. Let's not forget the $77 billion toxic taxes this government didn't have the courage to take to an election, which have shocked the innovative and business sectors, as they punish innovation and aspiration. Recent reporting on ongoing investigations into conduct within the construction sector show the CFMEU has used enterprise agreements strategically to generate revenue and control the construction industry.

In many respects, this is not new. Australians have known this for some time, particularly Victorians. The same inquiry has examined financial irregularities, the use of agreements as leverage and broader concerns about CFMEU influence in the sector. These are not historical issues—they are current—yet Labor's approach with this very dark cloud hanging over our construction sector is to enable more of the same. Procurement systems must remain transparent, competitive and grounded in value for money.

There is a consistent theme across Labor's workplace relations agenda. We hear much about secure jobs, bargaining and industrial structure, but we hear far less about productivity. Labor wants to elevate industrial arrangements as a determinant of access to government work without demonstrating how those arrangements improve efficiency, output or value for money. Productivity is not mentioned as the central test, and it ought to be. Productivity is not an academic measure. It determines whether wages can rise sustainably, whether projects can be delivered efficiently and whether households will face higher costs. If productivity weakens, construction costs rise, energy costs increase, infrastructure becomes more expensive and government budgets are stretched.

The problem with this bill is not its entirety; it is its 'wedge-islation' structure, trying to wedge us on this side of the house, putting the arguably good with the demonstrably bad. The Fair Work Commission reforms are necessary, are evidence base and respond to a clear operational problem, but they have been bundled with procurement provisions that introduce significant economic risk, lack clear evidence of benefit and have attracted widespread stakeholder concern. Australia cannot afford to ignore productivity. It is the single most important driver of long-term prosperity. This bill contains measures that will help the Fair Work Commission operate more efficiently—and those measures should pass—but it also contains provisions that risk distorting procurement, reducing competition and embedding higher costs in major projects.

On the central question of if this legislation will lift productivity or lower it, the answer is clear. It won't.

Jo Briskey (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

A secure job changes everything. It is the difference between building a life and just getting by. It is what lets someone take out a mortgage without laying awake over it or decide that it's finally the right time to start a family. When your job is secure, you stop bracing for next month. You can actually plan for it. This is what people want. It's not much when you think about it, a fair day's pay and a job you can count on. That is what the Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Building Cooperative Workplaces No. 1) Bill 2026 sets out to deliver.

When we came to office, insecure work was already on the rise, and for years it had been allowed to spread, as if that was just how things worked: casual jobs that were permanent in everything but name and came without the entitlements that should have gone with them; contracts that loaded every risk onto the worker; wages that went nowhere while the price of everything went up. None of that was by accident; it was a choice—one that those opposite made year after year—to leave working people with less power and fewer protections. It is a choice we are undoing, piece by piece, and this bill is the next piece.

When government puts the nation's money to work it should make sure that the money backs secure jobs and a workplace relations system that protects the fair go. The Australian government is the biggest customer in the country. Every year we invest in everything from construction to transport to security to catering to IT to the care of our loved ones. There is no bigger buyer of goods and services anywhere in Australia. So this bill asks a fair question: when we spend all that money, what kind of work are we paying for, and what is the standard we seek to set? Every dollar is a choice, and I think we should spend hours investing in the employers who are doing the right thing—those who pay properly and who sit down with their workers in good faith to secure genuine agreements.

Australians want their government to set the example. They do not want their money fuelling a race to the bottom. So this bill lets us use our purchasing power to promote fairer wages and more-secure jobs through enterprise agreements where it makes sense to do so. It doesn't compel the Commonwealth to do anything, but it gives us the option. How and when we use it is being worked through carefully through the secure Australian jobs code. As a responsible government, we are taking the time to get it right.

I sat through a few enterprise agreement negotiations myself in my years at the United Workers Union. Done properly, they work for everyone in the room, providing security and fair conditions for workers as well as flexibility and productivity for business. They work precisely because both sides have hammered them across the table in good faith. That is what makes them one of the best tools we have. And it is worth saying plainly that an employer who signs an enterprise agreement is signing up to better pay and conditions for their people. That is the whole point.

Think about what this means in practice. When we build a road or a house, who do we want building it? When we pay for a hospital to be cleaned or for older Australians to be cared for, what kind of businesses do we want on the other end of that contract? I want it to be the one that looks after their workers, not the one whose priority is to undercut their workers if they think being able to do that gets them a government contract because they are paying their workers less. When taxpayers are footing the bill they are entitled to expect quality delivered by people who are treated decently. Value for money and on-time delivery are our priorities. But let's be clear. Businesses who do the right thing by their workers are the ones delivering value for money.

This bill also stands up for a group of workers that the system has too often let slip through the cracks: our truckies. Drive through the north-west of my electorate and you'll see trucks rolling out before dawn, the men and women behind the wheel keeping this country running. We saw it most clearly during the pandemic. When almost everything else stopped, they didn't. The trouble is that owner-drivers and contractors carry enormous costs before they've even had the opportunity to earn a cent—the truck, the fuel, the insurance, the rego. The margins are wafer thin, and when a contract treats them unfairly, too many have had nowhere to go.

We have already given drivers a quick and simple way to challenge an unfair contract at the Fair Work Commission. But the high income threshold, the way it works now, was never built with a truckie in mind; it bears no relation to the way their costs and their earnings actually stack up. This bill fixes that, with a new threshold designed for the road transport industry—one that reflects what it really costs to keep a truck on the road. We will settle the right figure in consultation, but the aim is simple enough. When a truckie has been done over, they get a fast, fair process to put it right.

This is not where we started, though. Our fairer fuel reforms have already given drivers and operators a fast track to claw back a fairer share when their costs have spiked. Our gig work laws, the first of their kind anywhere in the world, finally give employee-like workers a floor of minimum standards to stand on. This bill carries on that work for the people who keep the country fed, stocked and moving.

The bill also turns to the Fair Work Commission. When a workplace dispute needs settling, the commission is who settles it, and right now it needs a hand. Its case load has been climbing for years, and the pressures keep piling on. There are more paid agents in the system than ever before, and AI, as we've heard so many times before, is driving more disputes through the door and trickier ones at that.

On top of all of that, a recent decision of the full Federal Court now forces the commission to work through technical jurisdictional questions before it can even begin on the substance of a general protections claim. Anyone who has dealt with the commission knows how that goes. Time and money is burnt for everyone involved. This bill does something practical about that without stripping away a single protection for workers. We want the commission free to get straight to the substance of a matter, rather than being bogged down by technicalities first. It can move quickly on claims that are frivolous or vexatious or have no reasonable prospect of success. It can decide more matters on the papers, but only where both parties agree. It cuts the red tape so supported bargaining can start back up without a fresh round of paperwork, where an authorisation is already in place.

Those opposite will predictably use this debate to have another go at the union movement and the workers who join it, but let's take the politics out of it. These are sensible, practical changes that make the system fairer for everyone who uses it. A quick, certain outcome matters to a small-business owner every bit as much as it matters to a worker. Underneath all of it is something this side of the House has always believed in: that working people do best when they have a voice, when they can bargain for a fair deal directly through their union. This is not new ground for us. The Labor Party was formed from the union movement, and we've never been shy about that.

Nearly every protection a worker is afforded today was won the hard way by ordinary people who organised and stood together, and nearly every one of them was resisted at the time by the conservative side of this parliament. The eight-hour day was won by the stonemasons in Melbourne in 1856, among the very first workers anywhere in the world to do so. The weekend, the minimum wage, paid leave, superannuation—none of this was a gift handed down from above. Every one of those was fought for, and in almost every case it was fought against by the same people who now come into this chamber to cry foul about workers' rights and the unions that stand up for them. When we move to make our work more secure, we are not breaking new ground. We are doing what Labor governments have always done, and the reforms in this bill are a reflection of listening to workers, to employers and to the people who represent working people.

No bill like this stands on its own. To see why this work matters, we have to remember where we are coming from. Those opposite have form. Under their idol John Howard, we got Work Choices, a calculated attempt to strip away the protections and the bargaining power of ordinary working people. When penalty rates were cut for some of our lowest paid workers, those opposite didn't lift a finger to reverse it. In fact, they have voted against every attempt we have made to protect take-home pay. When wages would not budge, one of their own senior ministers at the time told us why. Low wage growth, he said, was a deliberate design feature of their economic plan. That is what working people are up against—a political party hell-bent on stripping the rights of workers and the unions that defend them. We reject that completely.

From our first months in office, we have set about turning it around through our secure jobs, better pay reforms and then our closing loopholes laws. Between them, they shut down the rorts that have been used to undercut workers' pay. Penalty rate protections went into law for the first time, and some of the lowest paid workers in this country got a pay rise out of it. Every single time those measures came up to vote, those opposite voted against it. That is why we have been so determined to undo the damage of their decade in power, and it is why we bring forward this bill today.

This bill is not complicated. It backs secure work, gives workers who have been shut out a way back in and lets our commission get on with their job. Those opposite will predictably whinge about it. They always rail against every protection working people have ever won, but we do not accept that insecure work and flat wages are just how it should be. We are proud to stand with working people, backing them in on higher wages and more secure work, giving them the tax cuts that they want and need and helping most of them get into their own home easier. Every day we are in this place, we focus on how we can advance the lives of working people, whereas those opposite—all three right-wing parties that we now have in this place—spend every day trying to make life harder for working people. While those opposite stand against workers, we on this side of the House stand with them. That's why I commend the bill to the House.

Llew O'Brien (Wide Bay, National Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Building Cooperative Workplaces No. 1) Bill, which is intended to amend the Fair Work Act 2009, the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Act 2009 and the Independent Contractors Act 2006. The government claims this is supposed to improve the operation of the workplace relations framework. The government says the bill introduces measures that will streamline the processes of the Fair Work Commission and ensure the Fair Work Act can operate more effectively. The government also says it will encourage enterprise bargaining and deliver better protections for contractors, particularly those in the road transport sector. This is to be achieved by removing some of the red tape around the Fair Work Act to allow the Fair Work Commission to be more efficient, particularly in matters relating to dismissal or unlawful termination disputes, and enabling the commission to dismiss or prevent frivolous, vexatious or unreasonable cases and applications.

There are four key policy objectives in the bill. The first is to make dispute resolution faster and more efficient and reduce the delays, costs and administrative burden for workers, employers and the commission. It all sounds very good, doesn't it? The second is to promote enterprise bargaining and improve workplace outcomes to deliver higher wages, increased productivity and tailored workplace arrangements through collective bargaining, higher wages and increased productivity. That also sounds good—too good, actually. The third is to improve fairness to contractors, especially in the road transport sector, by extending protections for unfair termination and contract thresholds. The fourth is intended to modernise the system and remove some of the technical flaws in the existing legislation.

This sounds like quite an innocuous and reasonable bill that will deliver improvements for workers and their employers, but, like with everything this government does, there is a hidden agenda. While the majority of the bill deals with the procedural aspects of the functioning of the Fair Work Commission, there is a ticking time bomb within that will fundamentally change the future of Australia's industrial landscape and the economy generally. Disguised as part of the enterprise bargaining and improved workplace outcomes mechanisms are the procurement and funding incentives, which give the government the power to lawfully favour employers with enterprise agreements when awarding contracts and giving financial assistance.

This proposed amendment is designed to give the trade union movement even more power over the Australian economy and create an anticompetitive environment that permits the Labor government to openly favour tenders for government contracts from businesses that have a trade-union backed enterprise agreement. Business owners in Wide Bay have expressed their concerns to me personally about this aspect of the bill and they are very worried and they're rightfully very worried. One local business is in the midst of a multimillion-dollar project that will deliver important new regional infrastructure. They don't have any unions in their business and they are, rightly, worried how this bill will impact their competitiveness when tendering for government projects and grants.

One of the key elements of Australia's industrial relations system has always been the right of freedom of association for employers and employees. This was entrenched in the Fair Work Act in 2009, giving workers the right to choose to be in a union member or not. This bill allows the government or a Commonwealth authority to choose who gets contracts or grants based on whether a business has a union enterprise agreement. The amendment goes further by allowing the government to exclude businesses that are planning to make an enterprise agreement, but haven't yet, or that already have one but without union involvement. These rules could affect the whole supply chain, because government contracts often require all contractors and subcontractors to have agreement terms that are at least as good as those of the main contractor. This cascading effect means that employers who have no direct contractual relationship with the government could be forced to enter into an enterprise agreement with a union in order to secure a contract with another business many levels from the head contract. It will influence the wider economy far greater than the original government contracts.

The Fair Work Commission reforms contained in this bill seem to be warranted, but the procurement bargaining provisions will only further this government's aim to entrench union controlled enterprise agreement structures into the workplace landscape. This bill should be split so this House can pass the Fair Work Commission reforms while the implications of the procurement amendments can be properly examined. As it stands, I cannot give my support to this bill.

Alice Jordan-Baird (Gorton, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Building Cooperative Workplaces No. 1) Bill 2026. This bill is about making our workplace system work better. It's about fairness, it's about secure jobs, and it's about sure making the system works for workers and employers alike.

Let me tell you a bit about myself and my first job, as some of my colleagues here have done in contributing to today's debate. As a teenager, I worked at a local burger joint. I was young, I was in my first job, and I was enthusiastic to get it right. I believed that if you do the right thing and you work hard, you should be getting paid fairly. Meanwhile, my employers signed workers like me up to dodgy traineeships, which was designed to justify low wages. I learned back then—and I continue to understand now—that fair wages and conditions are not something to be taken for granted. They're not something that has always been a given in this country. They're something that need to be fought for, and that's why I joined the Australian Labor Party and why I couldn't be prouder to be part of the Albanese Labor government, because we are a government that has delivered the biggest workplace reforms in a generation. We have closed loopholes, we've strengthened job security and we've helped get wages moving again. But reform isn't something you do once and walk away from. We need to keep improving the system where we see the gaps, and this is exactly what this bill does.

One important part of this bill is supporting the work of the Fair Work Commission. The Fair Work Commission plays a vital role in Australia's workplace relations system. It helps resolve disputes, it helps protect workers, and it provides certainty for businesses, but its workload has increased significantly. This bill includes practical changes to help the commission work more efficiently. It will reduce unnecessary delays, it will deal with vexatious claims, and it will make sure that workers and employers can have their matters resolved more quickly.

It's important to note that these changes don't reduce protections for workers, they simply make the system work better. A strong workplace relations system should be accessible, and it should be efficient. That is exactly what these reforms are about.

This bill also supports good-faith bargaining. Enterprise agreements can deliver higher wages, secure jobs and better conditions. They can also deliver flexibility and productivity for employers. When workers and employers sit down together and negotiate in good faith, everybody benefits. This bill removes a barrier that prevents government spending from supporting employers who negotiate enterprise agreements in good faith. Importantly, there's normally a requirement for this to happen, but it gives government the ability to support fair wages and secure jobs where appropriate. Labor believes good jobs are good for workers, and we believe good jobs are good for productivity as well.

This bill is important, and I know the effects of what we vote on in this chamber will be felt right across the country. I know it will be felt in my electorate in Melbourne's western suburbs. Gorton is one of the fastest growing electorates in the country. There are about 80 babies born a week in the city of Melton alone. We are young, with an average age of 35, many with young families, and we're really diverse as well. In so many ways, my electorate is a microcosm of multicultural Australia with its vitality, its rich cultural and linguistic makeup, and its aspirations for the future. A good, hardworking community like mine deserves good measures to ensure that the Fair Work Act is working for them—for the Fair Work Commission to perform its vital functions effectively, for good-faith bargaining to be supported for employers and employees alike and for road transport contractors to be able to access proper protections.

Another really important measure of this bill is support for truckies. Our truck drivers keep Australia moving. They deliver the goods our households and businesses rely on every single day. In 2024, we introduced new protections in the Fair Work Commission for regulated road transport contractors, including truckies and small road transport businesses. Previously, it was hard for truck drivers working as independent contractors to challenge unfair conduct by contracting companies. Their contracts could be terminated without good reason, and they had a few ways to challenge contracts with unfair terms. Our closing loopholes reforms made recourse through the Fair Work Commission available to these workers so that if they were unfairly terminated or entered a contract with unfair terms, it was a way to make things right. But something still wasn't quite right. Truck drivers face significant costs to do their jobs: fuel, maintenance, insurance. For many owner-drivers, those costs are substantial, and, for that reason, conventional high-income thresholds don't always reflect the reality of the industry. The closing loopholes reforms created a contractor high-income threshold, which meant that some road transport contractors couldn't access recourse through the Fair Work Commission because their income was too high.

This bill recognises that this threshold didn't reflect the real situation for road transport contractors and amends that, allowing a separate high-income threshold for road transport contractors, meaning more truckies and small-road businesses will be able to access protections against unfair contracts and unfair termination. This bill reflects our broader commitment to supporting truckies. It's a tough time for every Australian on our roads, especially for those of us who are making their living from the road transport industry. Truckies deserve a fair go, and that's why we've extended the fuel excise relief for the month of July and slashed the heavy vehicle road user charge by 16 cents for the same period. It's why we've paved the way for the Fair Work Commission fuel cost recovery chain order, which requires parties across the road transport contractual chains to pay more to providers of road transport services, shielding road transport workers from the full brunt of increases to fuel prices. It's why we've amended the Fair Work Act to allow emergency powers to deal with surging fuel prices causing imminent risk to transport businesses and our national supply chains. It's why we've extended debt repayment arrangements available for businesses facing fuel-related financial pressures and started the $1 billion Economic Resilience Program under the National Reconstruction Fund to provide zero-interest loans to SMEs, including heavy-vehicle operators.

It's also why we're focused on improving road infrastructure around the country, including in my electorate of Gorton in the western suburbs of Melbourne. I know how important quality road infrastructure is for those in my community. It's important for mums and dads driving their kids to school; it's important for workers, who need good roads to deliver them safely from their place of work; and it's important for truckies, who absolutely rely on quality road infrastructure to make their jobs possible. It's why we're fixing the Western Freeway between Caroline Springs and Melton, investing a billion dollars for more lanes and better interchanges, improving the commute for the over 86,000 vehicles travelling on this stretch of road on the Western Freeway every single day. I'm laser focused on doing better for the west on road infrastructure and making sure that our truckies can deliver the goods Aussie households and businesses rely on safely and efficiently on our roads.

I'm also a proud member of the Transport Workers' Union, a union that represents over 20,000 members in Victoria and Tasmania, many of whom are truck drivers. I'm so proud to be part of this union that's dedicated to a fair go for truckies. I thank them for all of their work and advocacy and all they do to make sure that they represent the voices of workers. Labor will always stand with transport workers, because these are the workers who spend long hours away from their families, workers who keep our supermarkets stocked, workers who keep our businesses running and workers who keep our economy moving.

This bill also makes some practical changes to support reform in the construction industry. The Albanese Labor government took the strongest possible action to address serious issues within the CFMEU by legislating for the appointment of an administrator to the Construction and General Division of the CFMEU, and these changes will help support that important work. This bill gives the administrator an appropriate timeframe to prepare and submit a biannual financial report to the minister, as required under the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Act 2009. Enterprise agreements that are genuinely agreed and negotiated in good faith can be a very transparent and effective way of delivering secure jobs and fair conditions for workers, as well as flexibility and productivity for employers.

Under current legislation, the Commonwealth is legally prohibited from considering preferencing employers with enterprise agreements when making funding decisions. We're removing that barrier, allowing government purchasing power to promote fairer wages and more secure jobs through enterprise agreements where it is appropriate to do so. This bill also supports the National Construction Industry Forum because cooperation between workers, employers and government matters. When people work together, we get better outcomes. When we tackle problems together, we build a stronger industry and a stronger economy as well. This builds on a number of other workplace reforms this Labor government has made for Australians across the country. We delivered same job, same pay; we closed loopholes that undermined wages and conditions; we strengthened protections against wage theft; and we have helped deliver real wage growth.

For too long, workers were told they should be grateful just to have a job. Meanwhile, wages were stagnant, job security declined and people were working harder and falling behind. Unlike the three right-wing parties of Australia, we believe that hardworking Aussies deserve secure work and hardworking Aussies deserve decent pay and dignity at work. Our same job, same pay laws have benefited thousands of workers across the country with pay increases, because our government identified something important. If you're doing the same job with the same experience while wearing the same uniform, it's only fair you should get paid the same. Our payday super reforms are once-in-a-generation reforms to fix unpaid super, because workers deserve to get paid for their full entitlements, and Australians deserve to retire with confidence and financial security as well.

It's no surprise that the three right-wing parties of Australia have not in the past or here today supported our workplace reforms and workers' protections. Take our recent tax cuts. Our budget is ensuring that all 13 million workers in Australia are getting a tax cut, with the working Australians tax offset and the thousand-dollar instant tax deduction, as well as better pay for workers and a fair go for first home buyers. These are tax cuts that put more money in the pockets of everyday Australians. Combined, we've cut income taxes five times in three different ways, putting nearly $3,000 a year in the pockets of the average worker by 2028.

Those opposite talk about helping workers, but, when push comes to shove, they vote against it on the floor of parliament. The same can be said for our minimum wage increase. The Fair Work Commission goes through a lot of deliberation about how to set this minimum wage. It looks at business conditions. It looks at profitability as well as the needs of working people. It's settled on what I think is a really responsible wage increase. It's a real wage increase for workers. We've got to remember these are the lowest paid workers in the country, and they deserve a real wage increase. The fact that the right-wing parties of Australia cannot bring themselves to back a minimum wage increase is really appalling. They do not represent the interests of workers. Let me tell you, the protections for workers happen in this chamber, not just with words but with votes on bills like this one.

This bill is about practical changes that make the system work better, changes that support workers and changes that support businesses. I think of our nurses in our community, our hospitality workers, our teachers, our truck drivers, our warehouse workers, our tradies and our small-business owners. I think of these workers in our community because they work hard and they do the right thing. But that's not always enough. You need the right systems in place to support you. That's what this bill is about. If you want workers to be treated fairly, then you've got to fight for it, and in this chamber, we're fighting for the protection of workers. Fairness matters. Secure jobs matter. A fair go matters. That is why we on this side of the chamber will always fight for that—because Labor is the party of secure jobs, fair wages and safe workplaces. I commend this bill to the House.

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

I rise with great interest in the Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Building Cooperative Workplaces No. 1) Bill 2026, as someone who made a living out of the construction sector for 35-odd years before I came into this place, as a carpenter and joiner, as a registered builder and as a construction lawyer. There are some good elements in this bill that the opposition is happy to support, but there are some terrible elements of this bill, which I will leave to my discussions later on. Firstly, let's just have a quick look at some of the good aspects of this bill. The bill is basically in two main thematic parts. There are some changes to the Fair Work Commission and changes relating to enterprise agreements in Commonwealth procurement.

They're the two main issues, the two themes of this bill. The first one we support; the second one we do not support. In relation to the four main Fair Work Commission changes—the jurisdictional objections, the delegations, the vexatious litigants and determining matters on the papers—these are all are relatively sensible reforms, and the coalition is happy to support those. The coalition would like to see the government act responsibly and split the bill into these two main themes.

I recall, back in 2022, when this Prime Minister first won office, in one of his first speeches, he stood up and said, 'I'm going to be a prime minister for the whole of this country. I'm not going to create any wedges in legislation. I'm going to ensure that this government is open and transparent and honest and all that sort of stuff.' Well, we all know now, after four years, that anything could be further from the truth. This government continues, almost on a daily basis, to try and sneak stuff into what might otherwise be uncontentious legislation. It's hoping that the coalition will miss the insidious aspects of this bill.

In relation to the jurisdictional objections, this is an issue that we don't have a problem with. The jurisdictional objections clutter up the Fair Work Commission on the basis of arguments between employer and employee about whether someone was terminated or whether their position was terminated or not. There needs to be a specific or an individual hearing like a threshold hearing on that point. To do away with that jurisdictional issue is reasonable, given the massive backload in the Fair Work Commission that this government finds itself with. We think that that's a reasonable way to help ease the burden on the Fair Work Commission. The practical effect of this change is to reduce the unnecessary preliminary hearings, and it will allow the Fair Work Commission to get on with doing its job: helping parties to resolve their disputes.

The bill also creates a framework for the President of the Fair Work Commission to delegate certain procedural powers in unresolved dismissal and unlawful termination disputes to senior commission staff. Similarly, we don't have an issue with that.

Thirdly, the bill allows the Fair Work Commission to dismiss unfair deactivation and unfair termination applications where they're frivolous, vexatious or have no reasonable prospects of success—fair enough.

Fourthly, the bill also allows the Fair Work Commission to decide certain contested matters on the papers. I had the privilege of being an adjudicator for many years in my legal profession, where I determined matters on the papers. There are many instances where judicial officers or quasi-judicial officers have the benefit or the ability to be able to determine disputes on the papers—that is, without having an oral hearing. It saves the parties money and saves the parties time, so we don't have a problem with that.

There are some other minor amendments, which I won't take up the time of the chamber with. Needless to say, those minor amendments have the support of the coalition.

But I want to turn to the insidious nature of this bill, the insidious aspect that those members opposite don't really want to talk about, and that is in relation to the procurement bargaining involving the Commonwealth. Madam Deputy Speaker, as someone who worked as a young lad on building sites across Victoria—your state—on the first day of my apprenticeship, I was bullied relentlessly by members of the then Builders Labourers Federation, now the CFMEU. It was the first day of my apprenticeship on a building site. I would have been 18 years old and 70 kilos wringing wet, and I was apparently sweeping the floor too quickly for the liking of these two CFMEU goons. That started my significant distrust in the CFMEU.

What the changes in this legislation will effectively do is allow the Commonwealth to ensure that, in contracts that the Commonwealth enters into, contractors who are aligned with the CFMEU or have a particular arrangement with the CFMEU can be preferred to other contractors. Let that sink in for a moment. How could it be that, in 2026, this government, after everything that has happened with the royal commission into the building industry, with what's going on with the Commission of Inquiry into the CFMEU in Queensland right now and with all of the graft and corruption—the federal Labor Party have had their eyes opened just in the last 18 months. Now they've seen the light and they realise just how corrupt the CFMEU is, and they want to provide a means by which they can provide preferential treatment for unions who have particular enterprise bargaining agreements that provide preferential treatment to the CFMEU. How can that be? How can it be, when Geoffrey Watson SC recently identified $15 billion worth of graft and corruption in the Victorian construction sector—just in Victoria—involving the CFMEU?

When I was a lad, when we walked up to building sites there used to be a huge sign on the front gate, and that sign said 'No ticket, no start'—meaning that if you weren't a member of the then Builders Labourers Federation you could not get a job on that building site. Thankfully John Howard, when he was the Prime Minister, outlawed that practice through his freedom-of-association rules and laws. But unfortunately it has crept back in. The unofficial practice of 'no ticket, no start', whilst it was illegal, is effectively what unions like the CFMEU did. They introduced these rules: 'Sunshine, if you want a job doing the traffic control on this site, if you want a job doing the form work on this site, if you want a job doing the steelwork on this site, you've got to sign a CFMEU approved EBA. And if you don't, not only will we not allow you on this site but we will black ban every single one of the sites you are working on throughout this country.'

Apparently, according to members opposite who received very generous donations from the CFMEU, this all came as some great revelation. They had no idea that this was going on, despite my banging on about it for eight years beforehand. For eight years I've been talking about this in this place. The member for Watson, who was then responsible for it, came into the chamber about 18 months ago and said, 'Oh, we had no idea about this graft and corruption!' What a load of rubbish.

This bill effectively provides the Commonwealth with the ability to provide preferred treatment to enter into contracts with the Commonwealth to businesses who have approved EBAs with the CFMEU. To anybody who is listening to this from any building site around the country—and I know you are listening—what you should read from that is that if you don't have an EBA that is approved by the CFMEU you will no longer get Commonwealth government contracts; you will be locked out. This is effectively the way this government operates to control the construction sector, which has tens of billions of dollars worth of contracts each and every year. This is the payback for their CFMEU mates. This is how this government looks after their CFMEU mates.

The evidence is incontrovertible, whether it's the best-practice industry conditions in Queensland or whether it's the $15 billion worth of graft and corruption in the construction sector in Victoria, and there is so much more evidence to come out. It means that everyday mums and dads are paying more money, more taxes, to pay for roads, bridges and buildings—but not just public buildings. For every public building that's being built by those contractors that I spoke about earlier—the plumbers, sparkies, carpenters, formworkers and concreters—if they can get 150 bucks an hour on a CFMEU job, why would they want to take on another job for less? Why would they? That drives up the cost of the construction sector. It drives up the cost of building things in Australia. It drives up the cost of infrastructure. What that means is that we all pay more tax. We wonder why this government is looking for another $280 billion to take from the Australian taxpayer to pay for this sort of shenanigans. It is unfathomable that those members opposite can stand in here—

Julie-Ann Campbell (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

That's what same job, same pay is about.

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

I'll take the interjection from the member from Moreton, who obviously doesn't care about spending taxpayers' money carefully, because taxpayers are being cruelled by this federal government. There's another $280 billion in this budget of additional taxes, and those additional taxes will go to building things in this country but only by CFMEU approved contractors. That is the reality of it. The reality is that everyday Australians will be paying much more not just on their public works but on their private works as well.

This government does not give a damn about the costs of construction, as long as it looks after its mates in the unions. That's what this is all about. This is all about running a protection racket for the CFMEU just so that the government can keep getting their very generous political donations from the CFMEU. It's just a perpetual cycle of dependency between the CFMEU and this government. This government stands condemned as a result. (Time expired)

Mary Aldred (Monash, Liberal Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

In my remarks—and I don't intend to take my full allocated time—I want to concentrate on a couple of key areas, particularly as a Victorian who's very concerned about the rife CFMEU corruption in my state and the impact that that is having not just on our level of debt but on our level of government integrity and on small and family operated businesses not just in Melbourne but across regional Victoria as well.

The Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Building Cooperative Workplaces No. 1) Bill 2026 seeks to address some necessary change, it seeks to address some unnecessary change and it seeks to implement, I think, some bad change as well. I will run through those concerns. First up, this bill is the government's response to recent backlogs and a surge in cases at the Fair Work Commission, and that is fair enough. There are many instances, if you look through news reports, of backlogs as a result of the proliferation of generative AI tools. There is a record-high number of cases, 44,000, in recent reporting at the commission. Some of those cases are meritorious. Some of them are not. Unfortunately, a growing number are as a result of AI technology and they are flawed or faulty applications.

Deputy President Colman recently dismissed a claim. It was the fifth claim in two years by this applicant. The deputy president found that it was faulty and it was flawed and made some remarks about the impact of AI in building some of these applications. There's been some commentary around the fact that there's an $89.70 fee to lodge a complaint. In 40 per cent of cases, the Fair Work Commission waives it or reduces it. It has to be said, I think, with 50,000 unfair and general protection claims anticipated for this year, the issue of AI and a very low fee should be taken into account when dealing with looking at the impact administratively and certainly in the pursuit of natural justice at the commission. The Fair Work Commission has made some public commentary on that workload crisis. As I've said, AI assisted tools are a big part of that. The Fair Work Commission president, Justice Adam Hatcher, released a statement at the end of 2025 saying that the workload has become unsustainable and that modest levels of legislative change were needed to help. And that is a fair point.

What does this bill do? The bill has two main thematic parts to it: changes to the Fair Work Commission and changes relating to enterprise agreements in Commonwealth procurement. That second part is where I want to address some of my concerns. The reforms, generally, are fair enough, but I do not support the enterprise bargaining procurement changes. As a number of my colleagues and the crossbench on this side of the chamber have raised, there are serious concerns around the CFMEU and its ability to infiltrate, orchestrate and manipulate enterprise bargaining arrangements and negotiations, and the way that businesses are able to fairly go about these issues.

I want to refresh people's knowledge about some of these key concerns raised about the CFMEU, some of which go back a couple of years and some a couple of days. Recently, I was most alarmed to read:

Criminologists have told a Queensland inquiry the CFMEU likely used organised crime style methods to control the construction industry.

I know Geoffrey Watson's report to the Queensland government Rotting from the top has been referenced a number of times in this debate, and I think it is worth mentioning for a couple of reasons. The corruption induced by the CFMEU in Victoria has cost the taxpayer $15 billion, and that's a conservative estimation.

I represent a regional area; I represent a rural community. That $15 billion could go a long way to fixing roads, schools and hospitals in my electorate. I think, most particularly, of the West Gippsland Hospital, which the state government has promised to deliver for time after time. The money hasn't yet hit the ground in our community. Those are the services and infrastructure that that $15 billion of CFMEU linked corruption is costing Victorian taxpayers. It is costing Victorian communities. It is costing every taxpayer right across Victoria their ability to access the frontline services and amenities that they should, quite rightly, expect.

I've paid a lot of attention to the illegal tobacco market in recent times. You don't need to scroll very far down in the report by Geoffrey Watson to read the dot point on the link between the CFMEU and the illegal tobacco trade in Australia. That is deeply alarming. The proceeds of this are going to organised crime and bikie gangs, as in the case of the firebombing of the Melbourne synagogue linked to Kazem Hamad. These are very bad, dangerous activities. The fear is that that is now spreading out into the illegal alcohol industry as well. Anecdotally, there is some CFMEU linked influence over that as well.

I have deep concerns when looking at this bill—and the way that it constructs amendments around negotiations for enterprise agreements and procurement—that the CFMEU can get its hands all over this as well. I think taxpayers deserve better. I think our community deserves far better. That is why I stand in this place very strongly against what this bill seeks to do in relation to that. I will conclude my remarks early, and I thank the House.

Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Regional Health) | Link to this | Hansard source

I, too, rise to speak on the Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Building Cooperative Workplaces No. 1) Bill 2026. Like so many pieces of legislation, the name defies what's actually in the bill. We support sensible reforms that help the Fair Work Commission to do its job more effectively. We support measures that reduce unnecessary delays, measures that help workers and employers resolve disputes faster and practical changes that respond to the very real workload pressures that currently face the Fair Work Commission. What we don't support is the government using those sensible reforms as a vehicle for unrelated and highly controversial changes to Commonwealth procurement policy. That's why the coalition will be moving amendments. If those amendments are not accepted, the coalition will oppose the bill.

Like a lot of the bills that have come into this place since I've been here, this bill should be two bills. It contains two completely separate policy agendas. One part of it deals with Fair Work Commission efficiency and case management, and I'll talk a bit about that. There are some reasonable reforms in that part of the legislation that I think are fair enough. But the other part creates a legal framework for allowing Commonwealth procurement processes to preference businesses that have particular forms of enterprise agreements. We know what that means, don't we? These issues are not connected. They solve different problems. One of them creates huge amounts of problems. They affect different stakeholders, and they deserve separate parliamentary scrutiny.

The government says this bill is about helping the Fair Work Commission manage its workload. If that's the objective, let us pass that part of the bill and those reforms immediately. But, instead, the government has trickily attached a second industrial relations agenda that has significant consequences for Commonwealth contracting, procurement and processes and supply chains across Australia. The fact that these provisions have been bundled together raises an obvious question: if procurement measures are so sensible, why not put them before the parliament as a standalone bill? Why hide them amongst otherwise uncontroversial Fair Work Commission reforms?

The Fair Work Commission has been very public about the challenges it's facing. Its president has warned about unprecedented workloads. Applications have surged, processing times are increasing, resources are under pressure, and the commission has called for modest legislative changes to help manage the caseload. One example involves jurisdictional objections. Following the Milford decision, the commission has increasingly been required to determine threshold legal questions before moving to conciliation and dispute resolution, and that means more hearings, more lawyers, more delays and more cost. The original purpose of these processes was to resolve the disputes quickly and informally, and this amendment restores that practical approach. It allows the commission to commence conciliation where an applicant alleges dismissal or unlawful termination, rather than requiring lengthy arguments about jurisdiction even before the sensible discussions can take place. That's practical, and I support it.

The bill also allows certain procedural powers to be delegated to senior commission staff, which is again intended to streamline administrative functions and reduce unnecessary delays. If appropriate safeguards remain in place, then they are reasonable reforms. The coalition supports measures dealing with vexatious and frivolous claims. Likewise, allowing certain matters to be determined on the papers without the consent of parties is simply common sense. Not every matter is going to require a hearing. Not every matter requires people to travel, engage representatives and wait months for listing dates. If disputes can be fairly determined through written submissions, then the law should permit it, and that's a practical reform.

There is another element in the bill dealing with road transport contractors and the proposed high-income threshold, and the coalition has an open mind about the challenges facing owner-drivers and the transport contractors. But, with this section of it, we do believe that further scrutiny is required. Stakeholders themselves have expressed mixed views. That is why the provisions warrant closer examination through Senate committee processes.

These issues are all worthy of consideration. Most of them are very sensible reforms. But the next bit is where it descends into abject nonsense. The most controversial part of this bill is not those Fair Work Commission reforms that I spoke about. It's the other provisions, and they represent a fundamental change. Currently, the Fair Work Act protects against discrimination based on whether a business has particular workplace instruments or enterprise agreements. The government now proposes an exemption to that. That exemption would permit Commonwealth agencies to preference businesses with particular kinds of enterprise agreements in relation to procurement. Now, let's call this what it is: a deliberate legislative pathway for industrial relations arrangements to become a factor in Commonwealth procurement.

Procurement should be about value for money, and value for money for the taxpayer should be based on these principles: value for money, capability, performance, delivery and compliance with the law. That's what taxpayers expect and what businesses expect, and it's what governments should deliver. It shouldn't be based on whether a business has negotiated a union-covered enterprise agreement or not. That shouldn't be a deciding factor in the ability to compete for government work. This is particularly relevant for regional businesses and regional projects, because of what this will mean for really good regional projects. An example is the Shepparton to Melbourne rail line, stage 3 of which was 80 per cent funded, to the tune of $320 million, by the previous coalition government. I'm still waiting for it to finish, but maybe the Allan government can answer as to why it hasn't been finished yet. That's Commonwealth funding.

If regional businesses that don't have certain types of enterprise bargaining agreements with unions can't compete for that work, then we've really lost something in this country. Some of these smaller businesses have wonderful relations with their employees, their workers. They all live in the same town, so they all want these businesses to work. They all want to see the infrastructure that is being funded. Now they can't compete for that work, because of the types of industrial relations enterprise bargaining agreements that they have. It really is a kick in the guts for smaller regional companies, and the Commonwealth should not be picking winners and losers based on industrial relations preferences.

The government argues that these powers merely create an option, but the legislation goes further than creating an option. The provisions extend beyond the primary contractor. They can flow down supply chains. A subcontractor may face pressure because the head contractor seeks to satisfy procurement requirements, and that pressure can cascade through the multiple layers of commercial relationships. Today it might be a preference. Tomorrow it might become an expectation. Eventually, it risks becoming a de facto requirement. That's why businesses are concerned and why industry groups are concerned, and it's why we are concerned.

The unions have a lot of influence in this country. Some unions—and I do say 'some unions'—have been shown to be less than worthy of that influence that they have in this country. I'm a Victorian, and recent events in Victoria have demonstrated why parliament should proceed cautiously whenever access to work becomes linked to obtaining the 'right'—the correct—industrial relations arrangements. The Watson report has exposed deeply troubling allegations regarding corruption and misconduct within the Victorian CFMEU construction branch. There is an estimate that that has cost the taxpayer an extra $15 billion. I note that the Victorian Premier has disputed that, but when pressed last week on 7.30 with, 'What do you think the number is?', she absolutely refused to answer. If she's saying it's not $15 billion, then how much is it?

The lesson is not that enterprise agreements are inherently wrong. The lesson is that whenever market access becomes dependent on obtaining a preferred industrial relations agreement serious risks emerge. There are risks of coercion, risks of exclusion, risks of inflated costs—inflated costs for the taxpayer, and that's who we all should be working for. They work really hard to earn that money and pay those taxes, and we should treat that money with the respect that it deserves. There are also risks of corruption, and that should concern every member of this parliament. The Commonwealth should not be creating incentives that move us further in that direction.

We could learn from Queensland, and I say that as a proud Victorian. The former best practice industry conditions policy sought to embed industrial relations outcomes into government procurement. The Queensland government ultimately abandoned that policy. Why? It did because of concerns about cost pressures, project delivery and market distortions. The lesson is straightforward. Governments should focus on outcomes. Projects should be awarded to businesses that can deliver. Many businesses in regional Australia that have different industrial relations agreements are fantastic at delivering because they know the projects and they know the communities they're dealing with in many cases. It shouldn't just be businesses that simply satisfy an industrial relations preference.

What is industry saying about this? It's not just the coalition raising concerns. Industry stakeholders from across the economy have expressed strong reservations. Business groups have warned that public contracts should be awarded on merit, not on industrial affiliation. Builders have warned about impacts on small business. Industry associations have warned about reduced competition, and we know what reduced competition leads to. Others have warned that these changes undermine the principle of freedom of association. It's not a niche concern; it's a broad concern.

The coalition believes that this parliament can do two things at once. We should be able to support the sensible Fair Work Commission reforms. Many of them are contained in this legislation. But we should be able to reject the flawed procurement amendments. The Fair Work Commission reforms and Commonwealth procurement for certain types of industrial relations don't have anything to do with each other, and they shouldn't be in the same bill. So the government should separate these measures and bring forward the Fair Work Commission reforms as a standalone package. We can support them and we can get those important reforms. I congratulate the government on coming up with those reforms. We could get those through. But don't use those reforms as a cover for industrial relations changes that risk distorting procurement, reducing competition and increasing costs for taxpayers.

The coalition will move amendments to remove those procurement bargaining provisions to allow the parliament to deal with the Fair Work Commission reforms on their merits, and then we can debate as to whether the Commonwealth should be saying: 'Well, you've got a certain type of EBA with the unions; you can have this Commonwealth project. But whilst you treat your workers absolutely fairly and pay them well and work with them, you don't have that type of EBA, so we're not going to give you any chance to participate in a Commonwealth contract.' That's not the way Australia should work. If the government refuses to separate these issues, the coalition cannot support this bill in its current form.

Tom Venning (Grey, Liberal Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Here is more legislation from this Labor government. The Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Building Cooperative Workplaces No. 1) Bill 2026 is the government's response to a surging backlog at the Fair Work Commission. Officially, it's about the concept of cooperative workplaces. But let us be honest—beneath these necessary administrative fixes lies a union agenda. Separately, this bill makes aggressive amendments to the Fair Work Act, allowing the Commonwealth to actively preference companies that hold enterprise agreements with unions in government contracting. These reforms are unlinked. One is an administrative necessity; the other is a brazen ideological stitch up by Labor.

This is classic Labor. They favour big businesses who can afford massive compliance departments, and they overwhelmingly favour the union bosses who fund their campaigns. Speaking of which, you have to marvel at the enduring romance between the Labor Party and the CFMEU. It is truly the great love story. Romeo and Juliet had Verona; Labor and the CFMEU have construction sites and slush funds. They are like a couple who keeps breaking up in public, deleting the photos off Instagram but then secretly texting each other late at night when the campaign bills are due.

Yesterday, the Labor Party rammed through a motion which effectively guillotines debate on this profoundly consequential bill. The suspension motion itself is a pathetic, cynical wedge. It was supposedly moved to enable members to attend yesterday evening's solemn ceremony at the War Memorial and yet it conveniently contained a series of gags on highly controversial legislation. When the manager and deputy manager of opposition business rightfully tried to move amendments, Labor mercilessly gagged the debate.

The Leader of the House's motion means debate on the second reading is abruptly cut off at 5.30. This is undemocratic. Furthermore, it aggressively limits debate on the consideration in detail stage, allowing the maximum time of a mere 10 minutes per detailed amendment. Consideration in detail is precisely when we get to apply the blowtorch to the technical elements of a bill but we will not get to do that here. Why? Because the Labor Party fundamentally does not want parliamentary scrutiny. Genuine scrutiny will clearly expose that this is a complete love-in with the unions. Just as we saw with Labor's massive industrial relations agenda last term, they are up to their exact same old trick again—ramming bad legislation through our parliament. What's new?

Now while the coalition supports the vast majority of the practical elements within this bill, Labor have deliberately shoehorned in bad faith provisions, essentially forcing the opposition into a position where we must oppose it. The hypocrisy from the Prime Minister on this issue is staggering. Let us look at his own words regarding what he famously called 'wedge-islation'. In his very first press conference as Prime Minister he sanctimoniously declared he 'looked forward to leading a government that makes Australians proud, one that does not seek to divide or wedge, but seeks to bring people together peacefully.'

In his very first caucus address, he stated Labor wanted to be inclusive, claiming:

The former government sat around and talked about how to wedge the other side of politics.

As opposition leader, he constantly accused the coalition of trying to promote 'wedge-islation'. He claimed we were 'a government in search of an agenda'—always looking for division, never looking for unity. He was in the media claiming he wanted to bring people together after a decade of division. He repeated this exact same script ad nauseam.

Yet, exactly what do we have before us here today in this parliament? We have the absolute textbook definition of 'wedge-islation'. The government has explicitly warned that legislative changes were desperately needed to address the Fair Work Commission workload crisis, but they deliberately bundled these sensible reforms with extreme ideological procurement amendments they fully knew the coalition would never support. Because, of course, the coalition supports practical, common sense reforms that help the Fair Work Commission deal with this crippling workload. We fundamentally believe that justice delayed is justice denied. However, the government should not use sensible commission reforms as a convenient cover for passing entirely unrelated, highly damaging, radical union-centric procurement and contracting changes.

Our demand is simple, and it is reasonable. The bill must be split: pass the Fair Work Commission reforms immediately, and separately scrutinise the procurement bargaining provisions. Commonwealth procurement should always be based on value for money, capability and compliance with the law, not on whether it's a union. It should never be based on whether a business has signed the preferred industrial instrument of the Labor Party's militant union mates. We have seen exactly what happens when procurement policy is ruthlessly used to advantage union controlled arrangements. It inevitably risks higher costs for taxpayers, significantly reduced market competition and a highly toxic pay-to-play workplace culture. This culture actively entrenches corruption and maliciously shouts out lawful, hardworking businesses. The procurement provisions risk pushing union covered agreements straight through Commonwealth contracting and cascading brutally down the entire supply chain.

Let me outline the specific Fair Work Commission reforms that we do support. Up until the consequential court case involving Coles Supply Chain and Milford, the normal way the commissioner conducted general protections or unlawful termination cases was to proceed straight to the early dispute resolution stage. Even if an employer vehemently claimed there'd been no dismissal, the commission did not need to formally resolve these complex disputes upfront immediately. Milford disastrously changed this procedure, resulting in the commission having to deal with threshold jurisdictional legal obligations first. This made the entire process considerably slower, highly formal and excruciatingly expensive. The president estimates that about 600 cases a year now suffer through this delayed process.

The amendments here sensibly clarify the position, allowing the commission to reduce unnecessary preliminary legal arguments and to genuinely help parties resolve disputes efficiently. The bill also practically creates a framework for the president to delegate certain procedural powers in unresolved dismissal and unlawful termination disputes to senior commission staff, which is of course helpful. This allows many simple admin tasks to be handled swiftly, allowing matters to proceed to consent, arbitration or court. The bill powerfully allows the commission to dismiss unfair deactivation and unfair termination applications where they are demonstrated to be frivolous or vexatious or clearly have no reasonable prospects of success. Crucially, it allows the commission to make orders preventing relentless litigants from making further specified applications once their substantive application has already been decisively dismissed, preventing a massive waste of public resources.

Furthermore, the bill allows the commission to intelligently decide certain contested matters strictly on the papers without holding formal contested hearings. This saves valuable time and money while rigorously preserving procedural fairness, provided that both involved parties explicitly consent. We also acknowledge the minor amendments such as updating the National Construction Industry Forum membership, providing travel allowances for the Road Transport Advisory Group and granting more time for the administrator of the CFMEU to prepare vital financial statements.

However, we maintain deep reservations regarding the new standalone road transport contractor high-income threshold. These existing high-income thresholds deliberately exclude workers who are deemed to have sufficient bargaining power to seamlessly manage their own commercial arrangements outside of the strictly regulated statutory industrial safety net. Creating an industry-specific carve out purely for road transport contractors effectively pulls a defined class of independent commercial contractors unwillingly back into the complex Fair Work system. We are yet to see any credible evidence to support these specific provisions, which is why they should be subject to a Senate inquiry.

I turn to the most controversial, destructive part of this bill: the massive sweeping changes to government procurement preferencing. In the October budget, the government committed to establishing a secure jobs code. The consultation paper heavily hinted at radically altering public contracting. It suggested requiring entities to 'ensure that enterprise agreements used on government-funded projects are genuinely agreed'. Yet, since submissions closed in February, there has been absolute deafening silence—until now. The Gillard government introduced similar fair work principles in 2009, making compliance a condition for participation in procurement. The Abbott government rightly repealed those restrictive principles. Now this bill makes dangerous amendments to the Fair Work Act, allowing government to explicitly preference companies with enterprise agreements tied directly to employee organisations and unions.

Currently, the Fair Work Act strictly prohibits discrimination against an employer during public procurement. This means no-one, literally not even the mighty Commonwealth, can legally prefer one company over another simply because it has a union affiliated enterprise agreement. This bill shatters that vital protection. It deliberately creates a massive exemption allowing the Commonwealth to aggressively preference employers whose employees are covered by a union covered enterprise agreement. Critically, this is shockingly one-directional. It only excuses discrimination that inherently favours enterprise agreement coverage. There is absolutely no equivalent exemption for preferencing a non-agreement employer.

Worse still, this bill creates a terrifying new concept called a Commonwealth contractual arrangement chain to brutally enforce these new laws. If the Commonwealth contracts company A and company A subcontracts company B, company B is legally protected if it brutally preferences an employee with a union covered enterprise agreement, because its overarching contract demands it. This means this insidious bargaining incentive can aggressively flow down the entire supply chain, completely infecting every single level of contracting. Why are these provisions so terrifyingly concerning? Because they limit fundamental freedom of association and completely obliterate the central procurement principle of value for taxpayer money. They transform Commonwealth procurement into a blunt weapon for pushing union agreements onto fiercely independent, local small businesses.

Let me return to Labor's romantic partner, the CFMEU. If you want to know what this bill achieves, you only need to look at the explosive Watson report into the horrific corruption and misconduct in the CFMEU's Victorian construction branch, Rotting from the top. Watson systematically found that the enterprise agreement system thoroughly corrupted, describing it as utterly brazen, old-fashioned, pay-to-play corruption. Watson found there was absolutely no genuine bargaining occurring. A CFMEU official arrogantly told a contractor executive that nothing would be changed in the agreement, proudly proving that no actual genuine negotiation happened.

Independent Treasury modelling estimated it skyrocketed project costs by 25 per cent. Stakeholders are absolutely united in their profound alarm. Split the bill now. (Time expired)

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

There's a lot not to like about this bill, and you can tell there's a lot not to like about a bill when no Labor member has their name on the present speaker's list to defend the bill, to spruik the bill or to promote the bill. And I ask: why? Where are the Labor members when it comes to talking about the Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Building Cooperative Workplaces No. 1) Bill 2026? They're missing in action. There's a reason why they're missing in action. We just heard from the member for Grey, talking about the particular report by no less than Geoffrey Watson SC entitled Rotting from the top. He investigated the corruption and the misconduct in the notorious CFMEU's Victorian construction branch. This report became public because it was tendered at Queensland's commission of inquiry into that union and its activities. We learned that there was $15 billion of misappropriation. Let's call it that. It was $15 billion of taxpayers' money. It was $15 billion of funds that could have and should have been spent on things other than just going into union thugs' pockets. Let's call them what they are; they are union thugs. They are ruling the roost in Victoria. The sooner the Labor government is jettisoned from the Treasury benches in Victoria the better. The sooner they are a long way away from Spring Street the better off the nation will be—not just Victoria and not just Melbourne but, indeed, the country.

Geoffrey Watson SC found the enterprise agreement system in Victorian construction had been 'thoroughly corrupted', describing it as old-fashioned 'pay to play' corruption. It's not good. It's simply not good enough. When I was the infrastructure minister, I worked with—and worked well, I might add—the now Victorian Premier, Jacinta Allan, and we got some good things done. But, particularly in recent years, the CFMEU has become out of control. We hear terrible stories about the strong-arm tactics and the bully-boy worksite tactics used by John Setka and others. It's shameful. It's just not good enough.

The date 6 December 2022 was a dark day in the construction sector, particularly in Victoria, because that was the day when the Albanese federal Labor government put through the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Secure Jobs, Better Pay) Act 2022. What that did was it dismantled the Australian Building and Construction Commission, the cops on the beat, those who at worksites made sure that everything was as it should be in a fair and disciplined way. One would ask why an organisation such as the ABCC should be abolished. I have to give it to the Labor legislation title writers; they whacked in 'secure jobs, better pay' as if it were necessary, fair and much-wanted legislation. They've got a clever way of disguising what really is in the detail of any particular bill. That was one of the best examples of the worst kinds of bills. It was going to dismantle a group which was having such a positive and profound outcome on building sites.

The ABCC was a necessary watchdog. It truly was. It prevented unlawful union behaviour, the sorts of which are now on an industrial scale by the CFMEU. The ABCC also reduced project delivery costs for taxpayer funded infrastructure. When I refer to taxpayer funded infrastructure, I particularly refer to schools and to hospitals—those things which educate our children, those things which keep all of us alive—as well as roads. We know that we pay too much for roads. That's if we could get it in regional Australia, Member for Parkes. Your electorate is massive. So is mine. The upkeep, just the maintenance, of our roads has slipped markedly under this Labor government, let alone the construction of our roads. We know that when there's a Labor government in Canberra the split between federal and state is fifty-fifty. When there's a coalition government in Canberra, it's 80-20. So it's little wonder why the states delay construction on some of the bigger projects, particularly roads.

And, of course, the unions are always in there, trying to get their chop. They're always in there, trying to make sure that they can elicit funds, somehow, some way, from those big taxpayer funded projects so that they can stay in business—the business of being thugs on worksites. I was a union member once. I was a union member for 21 years with, firstly, the Australian Journalists Association, which then became the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance. I ran into the new head of the MEAA in the corridors this week, and I will say this. I don't wish my colleagues to think any less of me, but unions have a role to play. They do.

Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Immigration) | Link to this | Hansard source

I always knew you were a good man, Michael.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Member for Kingsford Smith. I like to think I'm a good man—but in balance. But it's not with the CFMEU doing what they do on workplace sites, particularly in Melbourne and throughout Victoria, at the behest and the coercion and the cooperation and the collaboration of the Australian Labor Party in that state.

Watson found there was no genuine bargaining. A CFMEU official told the contractor executive:

There is no bargaining—no, nothing will be changed in this agreement.

It's a shameful episode in what can happen when you let the criminal elements of a union take over, take charge, because it is criminal. They'll get away with it, as they often do, but it stops more hospitals being built. It stops more bitumen being put down on roads and saving people's lives. It does, particularly in Victoria, where they are in urgent and desperate need of a government that actually looks after the people who keep the lights on.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Member for McEwen!

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

He's a recidivist in that regard, Deputy Speaker.

Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Tell them the truth—

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Member for McEwen, please, you'll have other opportunities in the House—

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Can you make him withdraw that? He's telling me to tell the truth. Can you make him withdraw that, please, Deputy Speaker?

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I didn't even hear what he said; I'm sorry.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

He told me to tell the truth, and I am telling the truth.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Anyway, let's not repeat offences here.

Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

You're not telling the truth.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Member for McEwen!

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

He's easily stirred up because he knows what I'm saying is correct, particularly when it comes to the CFMEU. He probably came in deliberately to try to put me off my flow—

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Let's not do much more provocation as well.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

which was referring to the importance of fairness in the workplace, on the worksite, particularly when our construction sector is in freefall under those opposite. When it comes to insolvencies and bankruptcies, it's the transport sector and the construction sector that are the highest. They're doing it the toughest. So many hardworking companies and businesspeople are going out backwards because of the policies of the federal Labor Party and government, which brings into this place legislation such as that, and then nobody is prepared to speak about it. We've got members, such as the member for McEwen, who are prepared to interject on those who are actually standing at the dispatch box and speaking about the legislation but not prepared to talk on the legislation.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

It being 1.30, the debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour. The member will have leave to continue speaking when the debate is resumed.