Senate debates

Monday, 5 September 2022

Regulations and Determinations

Code for the Tendering and Performance of Building Work Amendment Instrument 2022; Disallowance

8:04 pm

Photo of Gerard RennickGerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Well, well, we couldn't expect anything better from an inner-city barrister who loudly proclaimed that he was a proud member of the BLF and worked with the BLF in his former history. But this isn't about attacking the union membership. I want to be very clear: this is about protecting the union membership from the union officials who use violence and intimidation against workers. Somehow, it's this side of the chamber that doesn't care about working-class Australians. This side of the chamber believes in working-class Australians. I can assure you that it's the inner-city elites, whether they're big companies, big unions or big bureaucracies—there's not much difference between them these days. Don't come in here and accuse the Liberal Party of not standing up for working-class Australians. Come to Queensland, Senator Shoebridge. I'll tell you who the working class Australians stand up for. Look at the outer-metropolitan seats. The working class back us because we back the working class. We back the working class!

We have seen what 30 years of Labor and their union mates have done to our economy in Queensland. They have run it into the ground. For you to come in here and talk about hypocrisy—Senator Hughes just gave one of the best speeches I've ever heard in this chamber, calling out the hypocrisy of those on the other side. They come in here and feign as though they care about women. They feign as though they care about workers. They feign as though they care about essential services. They don't care about any of it! All they care about are their rivers of gold. Why is that? Because over the last 20 years the CFMMEU has put more than $16 million into the Labor Party—and that's just one union. For you to come in here and say that somehow we are living off other donations or anything like that is totally false. Not that you'd know, Senator Shoebridge, living in your little ivory palace in Sydney, in the eastern suburbs. Don't talk to me about the battlers, mate.

Queensland Health blew billions of dollars on the Sunshine Coast hospital, and that money got sucked out of the maternity wards in the regions because of cost overruns. Because of union bullying, they're going into inner-city Brisbane and building casinos and a tunnel from one side of the city to the other. That's going to cost about $10 billion. It already has a couple of billions of dollars in overruns. It's going from one side of the city to the other. Do you know what that does? It kills essential services. And all you care about is casting aspersions that the Australian Building and Construction Commission is a spurious body. Well, here's a little fact for you: 98 of the 107 cases have prosecuted the unions. That is not spurious. They have found the unions guilty. That is not a spurious body. It's one of the few bureaucratic or judicial institutions that actually achieves something. That is an over 91 per cent success rate.

You come in here hand you mock this. You trivialise it by saying that this body is going after unions because they're waving flags or flying flags or there are stickers on their helmets. No, this is much more serious than that. This is about violence in the workplace. It is about cost overruns. It is about misogyny. It is about the fact that the money's being wasted on cost overruns because of the mates, the tier 1 construction companies. I can assure you that we're no friend of the tier 1 construction companies. They're in bed with big unions. So this whole idea that you're going to keep painting us as the party for the big end of town—no, no, no. The Greens is the party at the big end of town. The Greens seats are all in inner-city Brisbane and Melbourne, and the teals are all in the rich suburbs. The Greens party, the unicorn party, is the party for the elites who don't want to do the hard yards—unlike the workers who put their noses to the grindstone. I tell you what, those seats are all coming our way, especially in Queensland. We are starting to see it in Western Sydney. We see it in outer Melbourne, because you guys are only interested in your rivers of gold and your command and control, where you get to dictate the rules to everyone. A classic example was vaccine mandates. You guys could have stood up for those workers who exercised their free and democratic right to choose what goes into their body. Where were the unions then? They were nowhere. Or I should say, where were the union officials? I have to distinguish between the membership, who I do care about because they are the people, the workers, who put their noses to the grindstone. But the union officials and the Labor Party are not interested in the workers. What they're interested in doing is driving small business into the ground, getting into bed with their big foreign-owned tier-1 building contractors and the unions, making sure that they rip out rivers of gold, whether it be via union fees, superannuation fees or by managing over a trillion dollars in wealth on behalf of the workers. They have marched into the corporate boardrooms via their industry super funds and are running our companies into the ground.

I am going to run through here exactly the misbehaviour that the CFMMEU and many other unions get up to. This is the abuse and misuse of power by these union officials, who aren't actually standing up for the workers. They're not interested in the guys who go to work every day, who get out of bed, who put their nose to the grindstone, no. So let's go through this. They paid $2 million in penalties just in the last financial year alone. The Australian Building and Construction Commission has received a successful outcome in 80 out of 88 cases against the CFMMEU. Over $16 million in penalties have been awarded against the CFMMEU and its representatives since 16 December. Another $22 million in penalties have been awarded against the CFMMEU and its representatives in cases brought by the Australian Building and Construction Commission. These aren't trivial amounts of money. They're not penalties or fines because someone wore a sticker on their helmet or flew a flag or anything like that, no. This is all because of violent misogynistic behaviour going on within unions and in workplaces that is actually intimidating people working there, and it's also increasing the cost of building essential services.

I tell you what, we need to start building in this country. If we're going to keep this country on its feet, we need to get more infrastructure going in this country, but you cannot do it because of this cosy relationship between tier-1 foreign building constructors and the union movement. The union officials are basically doing out the taxpayer because the taxpayers are forking out billions of dollars more than they need to in order to build this essential infrastructure and it has got to stop.

Let's just go through some of the actual egregious misbehaviour by union officials towards their own members. The thing about the Australian Building and Construction Commission is it's a union that actually fights against union officials. I mean, if the union officials were doing their jobs properly, the members wouldn't be intimidated. They wouldn't be assaulted. They wouldn't have these spurious names, as Senator Hughes pointed out previously. The behaviour is outrageous. Senator Chisholm was sitting there smirking at this when it was all going on. Somehow this will be the new intimidation practice—to sit there and smirk. This is on top of his intimidation of Senator Cash this afternoon. I mean, this behaviour goes on right here in this chamber. We have seen it from Senator Chisholm. We're used it to from Senator Watt. It's not the sort of behaviour we should be tolerating. It is not on. A CFMMEU official was jailed for assault and once told a female inspector that she—I won't even repeat the words. He asked if she had brought kneepads because she was going to be beep, beep, beep dogs all day. This stuff is outrageous.

The Courier Mail revealed that a CFMMEU official allegedly barked like a dog at a female health and safety consultant at a Gold Coast construction site and said: 'Go on, off you go, you beep dog. Beep, get your police.' He allegedly called her 'a beep dog, beep beep' twice more that day. How is it that the Labor Party want to abolish a commission that is standing up for women in the workplace? What is it with the Greens party? Why are you standing up there and basically removing a safeguard for women in the workplace? Seriously! What is the reason for this?

The reason is that Labor are all talk and no action. They don't care about women; they don't care about the working class; they don't care about providing essential services. All they want to do is get their rivers of gold from the union movement—whether it be through union fees, whether it be through superannuation fees, whether it be through controlling all that money in their industry super funds. All they want is command and control because that is the modus operandi of the two parties opposite us, the Labor Party and the Greens party. All they want to do is tear down and destroy this country in order that a few inner-city elites—and people are waking up to this. Working-class Australians are waking up to just how dangerous and how—they're seeing through the Labor Party. The Labor Party used to stand up for the working class, but not anymore. The working classes are seeing how dangerous this party and the Greens party combined are going to be.

You've only got to look at who's running the show. We've got the Prime Minister, he's from inner-city Sydney. We've got people from the Greens over here; they're from the inner-city as well. They've always had good essential services where they've grown up—St Vincent's Hospital and things like that. But why won't they stand up for people in metropolitan Australia and regional Australia? Why won't they do that? Because that is where the wealth of this country comes from. It is the backbone of this country, they are working-class people, and Labor have turned their backs on them. By trying to remove this body from standing up to the thuggery and the violence and the intimidation in the union movement, Labor are revealing their true colours—they do not care about the Australian worker.

This country was built by the battler; it belongs to the battlers. And I can assure you that we on this side of the chamber are going to do everything we can to make sure it's the battlers who are rewarded. If Labor had their way, they would concentrate power within the bureaucracy, within the unions and within big business with their inner-city mates in their ivory towers of Sydney and Melbourne and basically let the rest of the country fade away. They'd be happy with that. I tell you what: we on this side of the chamber aren't going to let that happen—you watch!

Peter Dutton, the member for Dickson, knows a thing or two about the working class. He's been standing up for the good people of Dickson for the last 20 years. You've been writing him off, but I tell you what: he knows what it's like. He grew up on a farm—he's got a multigenerational family out there at Samford. I'm from a multigenerational working-class family. My grandparents used to vote blue-collar Labor, but do you know what? You guys lost the plot. You became Marxists and communists and you forgot that the true capitalists in this country are the people who get out of bed every day, put their noses to the grindstones and do the hard yards. But you're not interested in that; you're interested in protecting your bureaucrats and your unions and your big corporate end of town. None of these guys—these guys aren't your primary and secondary industries. They're not your farmers, they're not your miners, they're not your manufacturing industry.

Who can remember the Hawke-Keating years? You destroyed the manufacturing industry under the Button plan, yet you subsidised the academic sector. You now have an academic sector that is out of control, selling university degrees for all sorts of crazy studies. And how you do you solve the problem? You bring in more immigrants to fix the labour shortage that is only caused because so many people—50,000 people—work in paper shuffling within superannuation alone. About 150,000 work in universities—most of these degrees aren't worthwhile degrees. Sure, STEM degrees, medicine—I get it. You go to university if you want an engineering degree and things like that. I get it. But the fact that you guys are trying to remove this commission just goes to show that you don't care about the real people in this country. You're not interested in standing up against violence, intimidation, sexual assault and misogyny. Shame on you Labor and shame on you the Greens!

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