Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to make a contribution to the debate on these important pieces of legislation, the Building and Construction Industry (Improving Productivity) Bill 2013 and the Building and Construction Industry (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2013. In name, this legislation is about the building and construction industry, but it is also important to the strength of our economy as a whole. Of course, this is a debate which has long been running. In my view, it is a debate which has gone on for much too long. This really should not be an issue of great controversy. After all, this legislation merely seeks to ensure that those who work in the construction sector are able to go about their work day to day without experiencing harassment and without experiencing threats and intimidation at the hands of rogue union officials. This legislation does nothing more than make certain that the rule of law is respected on construction sites across the nation—just as we expect the rule of law to be observed and respected everywhere else across our country.

I find it absolutely extraordinary that, in effect, we have been having a debate on this legislation for more than three years and through the life of two parliaments. It is really quite incredible that, for the life of two parliaments now, senators opposite have come into this chamber and sought to explain away and to make excuses for thuggish and intimidatory behaviour on the part of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, the CFMEU. The people of Australia have now voted for this legislation twice. It was a key element of the coalition's industrial relations platform that was taken to the 2013 federal election, and, of course, the Building and Construction Industry (Improving Productivity) Bill 2013, which is now before us, was one of two bills that led to the double dissolution election in July this year, at which the coalition government was re-elected.

I say to the Labor Party: there comes a point at which you have to accept that the game is over, that the game is up. The people of Australia long ago woke up to the real reason for the Labor Party's stubborn attitude to what is a sensible, prudent piece of legislation. It is unfortunate that the Australian Labor Party cannot survive without the rivers of cash that flow to it from the CFMEU. In fact, I and many Australians find it tragic. Of course, I disagree with the Australian Labor Party on a great many policy issues, but, despite those disagreements, I acknowledge that their party has a proud history and genuine policy achievements to which it can point. That is why I find it tragic that, after more than a century of existence, the Labor Party now finds itself dependent on donations from a discredited and corrupt organisation like the CFMEU merely to survive.

However, the Labor Party's financial problems should not become the nation's problem. In particular, they should be not used as an excuse to hold our economy's third largest sector to ransom, because problems in the construction industry are problems which ultimately affect every Australian. In day-to-day life, all of us are dependent on services delivered by the building and construction sector, in the sense that we simply cannot survive without the infrastructure it creates. The houses and apartments we live in, the offices we work in, the shopping centres in which we purchase our essential goods and services, the roads and public transport systems which we use to reach them, the schools and universities we send the next generation of Australians to learn in and the hospitals we need, which deal with the health challenges of an ageing population, all have to be constructed. So we need to be very clear about the fact that, when we talk about issues in the construction industry, we are very much talking about issues that impact our daily lives.

Putting aside those practicalities, there is also the fact that the building and construction industry is the nation's third largest industry, responsible for generating around eight per cent of Australia's gross domestic product. It is responsible for employing around 1.1 million of our fellow Australians. Within the industry, there are around 300,000 registered small businesses, many of them family-run and operated. Accordingly, maintaining the health of our building and construction industry is critical to Australia's overall economic wellbeing, and it is the view of this coalition government that the construction sector cannot be healthy so long as it remains host to the toxic culture of lawlessness that permeates the CFMEU.

This bill will finally re-establish the Australian Building and Construction Commission, a genuinely strong and independent watchdog that will maintain the rule of law to protect workers and constructors and improve productivity on building sites and construction projects, whether they be onshore or offshore. This legislation will at long last reverse some of Labor's changes to the nation's workplace laws which underpinned the Australian Building and Construction Commission before it was abolished by the Gillard government in 2012, when the now Leader of the Opposition was the responsible minister.

The bill will reassert the rule of law on Australia's construction sites, preventing unlawful industrial action, unlawful picketing and coercion and discrimination. I think it is worth noting just how widespread the problem has become across our country. If you accepted the word of Labor senators who have participated in this debate, you would think we were discussing a very minor problem, but that is far from the truth. As of October this year there were 113 officials of the CFMEU appearing in courtrooms around the nation, between them charged with over 1,100 breaches of the law. Over recent years penalties totalling around $8 million have been imposed on the CFMEU for breaching the law.

Then there is the question of productivity in the sector. The current rate of industrial action in the construction sector is nine times higher than the average across all other industries in the economy. Two out of every three days lost to an industrial dispute in this country are lost within the construction industry. Since Bill Shorten abolished the ABCC as industrial relations minister in 2012 there has been a 40 per cent increase in the rate of disputes in the construction industry, while the rate of disputation across other industries has declined by 33 per cent on average. When the ABCC was still in existence, productivity growth in our construction industry was around 20 per cent. Today, it is flat.

By any measure, these are not inconsequential statistics. They tell a clear and compelling story—a story that needs to be corrected. Can you imagine if we were talking about any sort of organisation other than an Australian union? If it was a major company—dare I say a major bank—and 113 of that organisation's officials were appearing in courtrooms across the country, charged with breaching the law, do you think for a moment that the Labor Party's attitude would be, 'There's nothing to see here; please move on'? Yet because it is the CFMEU, without whom today's modern Labor Party cannot survive, we have been subjected to the sorry sight of Labor senators trooping into this chamber to try to defend the indefensible and in the process destroying a once proud Labor legacy.

What is most staggering in all of this is the Labor Party's refusal to learn from history, because we have been through this sorry exercise before. In 2001, when the Howard government was in office, the Cole Royal Commission into the Building and Construction Industry found serious and systemic breaches of the law on the part of the CFMEU. In relation to my own state of Western Australia, that royal commission found that 'the rule of law has little or no currency in the building and construction industry in Western Australia', that the building and construction industry in Western Australia is 'marred by unlawful and inappropriate conduct' and that 'Fear, intimidation and coercion are commonplace.'

It was this type of behaviour that the ABCC was designed to address—a strong specialist regulator that would tackle the problem head-on and enforce the rule of law in the building and construction sector, and from the time the Howard government established the ABCC until such time as Bill Shorten abolished it in 2012 it managed to do this very effectively. In fact, research undertaken by Independent Economics found that, because of the cost and efficiency improvements that flowed through the construction sector as a result of having the ABCC in place, consumers were better off by around $7½ billion every year. Any responsible political party would look at that and concede that the ABCC was of enormous benefit to the Australian economy.

You might have thought that instead of putting so much time and energy into first abolishing the ABCC and, since 2013, fighting efforts to re-establish it every inch of the way the Labor Party would have been better served by convincing its CFMEU allies to operate within the confines of the law. Yet so weak has the modern Labor Party leadership become that instead of working with decent unionists—and, of course, there are plenty of them—to clean up the situation, Labor has capitulated to those thugs who run the CFMEU. Again, this demonstrates an utter failure to learn the lessons of history.

Again, I turn to a living, breathing example from my own state of Western Australia. Notorious CFMEU boss Joe McDonald's history of criminal thuggery is well known to Western Australians. It became a source of national embarrassment for then Labor leader Kevin Rudd in the lead-up to the 2007 federal election. To give Mr Rudd his due, he was unwilling to have a thug like Joe McDonald in the upper echelons of the Labor Party that he led. He subsequently ordered Mr McDonald's expulsion from the party. Julia Gillard, former Labor Prime Minister, was right onboard at the time, saying, 'Kevin Rudd and I have made it clear that under our leadership of the Labor Party there will be zero tolerance for unlawful behaviour and thuggish behaviour in Australian workplaces.'

Yet, as was often the case, Ms Gillard's principles came a distant second to the political imperatives of her party. During her time as Labor leader, Joe McDonald was readmitted to the ranks of the Australian Labor Party and he has systemically worked his way back into the heart of its internal affairs in Western Australia. And less than one month ago we had a powerful demonstration of just how tight a grip Joe McDonald now exerts over the Western Australian Labor Party when a video emerged of him boasting to a meeting of workers about just how far-reaching his influence is within the Australian Labor Party in Western Australia, reaching all the way to its leadership here in Canberra.

Sitt ing suspended from 18 : 30 to 19 : 30