Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is a great honour to stand up in support of this bill, the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment Bill 2014 [No. 2]. It is an opportunity to support stronger regulations in what is a very important sector in our economy. It is also an opportunity for the Labor party to demonstrate to the Australian people whose side they are on—whose side are you on? Are you on the side of the worker who has to work hard to pay their union dues? Are you on the side of people who want proper protection in the workplace; or are you on the side of the people who run unions currently? Are you on the side of people who have been exposed as mishandling and misusing members' funds?

It will be very interesting to see which way the Labor Party votes on this, because it will reveal whose side they are on. Are they on the side of the workers as they actually say in this chamber over and over again; or are they on the side of their political puppet masters who control the strings of their positions here in the Senate and sometimes in the lower house? We all know how many senators here from the Labor Party owe their positions to unions. It is almost all of them and, because they do, they are somewhat conflicted on this bill. They say that they stand up for the worker. They say they stand up for people who do it tough and are on or below average wages, and they want to get a better deal for them.

I do not think it was a good deal for the nurses of New South Wales who have to empty bedpans and work hours away from their families They have to do all of those things and pay their dues to their union and then have people like Mr Williamson and Mr Thomson defraud them of their money by going and spending that money on fancy dinners, travel, some establishments we will not mention here in this chamber and also just little incidental things. I remember when that report by the Fair Work Commission came out on the conduct of Mr Thomson in particular. I remember that it was not just that he was living large, living on the hog from the work of ordinary health sector union members. It was also that he was using his corporate credit card, or his trade union credit card, as his own personal piggy bank. You could see in the transactions exposed by that report that day after day he would go to the local service station and buy a chocolate bar or buy a soft drink, all on union money. It was all personal expenditure, all with a complete lack of care and fiduciary duty for his own members' money.

It will be very interesting to see on which side the Labor Party comes down on this because these changes here have their genesis in those allegations from a few years ago. They are a specific response that the coalition crafted after those sordid details were exposed. It was something that the coalition took to an election. We took a promise to the Australian people that we would get tough and we would strengthen the requirements on trade union officials to make sure that people who do the wrong thing are held to some form of account. That is all that this bill does. All this bill does is try to make sure that the behaviour and actions of trade union officials are disclosed to their members, as they properly should be, and that, if they are found to be doing the wrong thing, they are subject to appropriate sanction and discipline by the law, as they should be.

So whose side are the Labor Party on? Well, maybe I should not ask, because I think I am going to be disappointed. I do not think they are actually going to be on the side of the worker here. I think they are going to come down, once again, to favour the trade unions and to favour officials in very well paid and secure jobs, against the interests of their own workers, who do not necessarily share those same benefits.

Unions were set up for a purpose. In my maiden speech I mentioned that trade unions have done good work over a number of years in our community and in other countries to improve the lot of workers, but some have travelled far from that original purpose, no longer have the interests of their own members at heart and seem to act for their own personal gain before they act for the collective interest. I believe that is often a consequence of the fact that we have substantially protected trade unions in our legislation over the years.

We have a registered organisations act from this parliament which provides trade unions with very special privileges. They are somewhat exempt from competition from other unions establishing to try to get members in their area. You can take the Health Services Union as an example. Notwithstanding the conduct of Mr Thomson and Mr Williamson, particularly in the New South Wales branch of the Health Services Union, because of the way the registered organisations act is written, no other union could be formed to offer membership to workers in that sector if they could conveniently belong to the health sector union as it stood. There is a provision in the Fair Work Act which says that, if someone can conveniently belong to an existing union, someone cannot set up and establish a different union to compete with them.

That is the economic equivalent of saying: 'You must buy milk from this supermarket. That's it. That's the only supermarket you can buy milk from. You've got no choice.' What do you think is going to happen to the price and quality of milk in that environment? It will fall because there will be no discipline; there will be no choice on the part of the consumers; and you will get bad outcomes. One of the greatest things we have in this country, if not the greatest thing, is our choice: our choice to do as we feel like in our lives, to buy what we like and to live with whom we like. If Senator Nash did not like her cup of coffee this morning, she can go to a different cafe tomorrow and get a better cup of coffee. Through that process we get good cups of coffee. We have pretty good cups of coffee in this country because we have choice.

If you do not have choice, you get bad outcomes. If you do not have choice on who your political party leader is, you get someone like Bill Shorten, because the Labor Party do not have a choice on who leads them now. They have locked themselves into Mr Shorten because they have taken that right away from themselves, and then you get bad outcomes. You get bad outcomes like the current Leader of the Opposition. That is what happens when you do not have choice. I would encourage the Labor Party to embrace the concept of choice and once again open up the leadership of the Labor Party. You might get a better outcome, not that I would wish for that, but at least choice would be returned to their membership.

I want to mention one more thing. Not only do we have a Fair Work Act which protects trade unions from a competitive environment but we also exempt trade unions from various provisions of the Competition and Consumer Act that other organisations are subject to—in particular, collective bargaining and collusive behaviour. If farmers want to collude, if farmers want to get together and bargain in a collective fashion like a union does, they need to meet certain public interest tests under the Competition and Consumer Act before they enter into a collective bargaining arrangement. Unions are lucky not to have those restrictions placed on them. Once they are a registered organisation under the Fair Work Act, they can be exempt from those particular provisions and legally collude as often as they like.

We are not arguing against that in this bill. As I said earlier, unions have played an important role in our society and continue to, and if this bill is passed we will continue to have unions that are exempt from provisions of the Competition and Consumer Act and that can collectively bargain with their employers to get the best deal for their workers. What this act is all about is providing a more effective, more transparent and more accountable trade union sector than currently exists. This is a pro-worker bill because it will help return power to the members of unions, who are actually the workers. The members of unions are the ones who should be able to run and hold accountable the people who run their unions. This bill will help them do that.

The only people who should be afraid of this bill are those people who are doing the wrong thing, because all this bill does primarily is increase penalties for people who are doing the wrong thing. So, if you are a trade union official who is doing the wrong thing, you should be afraid of the legislation passing through tonight. But, if you are not doing the wrong thing, if you are acting in the interests of your members—and I would hazard a guess that the majority of trade union officials are doing the right thing and, as usually happens in society, it is just a few bad eggs—you will have nothing to fear from this bill. So why are the Labor Party so afraid of this bill, Senator Nash?