Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Unlike most who have spoken—in fact, probably unlike anyone who has spoken in this chamber—I actually have worked in the construction industry. I started working in the foundations of buildings. I did my trades apprenticeship as a carpenter-joiner. I worked on construction sites and I saw the impact of good unions and the impact of bad unions. I have a good friend who was a boss and had a picket through his windscreen as he drove onto a construction site that had a militant union. It's an outrage that those on the other side come into this place and run a protection racket for bad unions and bad union leadership.

This is not about flags and stickers. For those on the other side to try to hide behind a cliche that this is about flags and stickers and people who just don't like unions is a complete and utter cop-out. In fact, it's outrageous. We all sat in this place over the last three years while we investigated and condemned poor behaviour in this workplace, particularly against women. Yet those on the other side, particularly as we have seen in contributions from the Greens just now, are effectively running a protection racket for those who abuse women, who threaten women with unspeakable things. I imagine what would be said about any of those on this side had we been associated with anybody like that—the outrage that would have come from the other side of the chamber. It would have been relentless. It would have been unending. And yet what's happening right now from Labor and apparently from the Greens is that they're running a protection racket for those who threaten women in ways that so many of my colleagues have put on the record here tonight and I don't intend to do, because it is outrageous and a disgrace.

You don't rack up millions of dollars of fines for flags and stickers. The Supreme Court and the High Court don't award damages of that scale for somebody who has flags and stickers. It's an absolute outrage and a disgrace that anybody would come into this place and try to use that as a smokescreen for what we all know is happening in the construction industry and which this side, the coalition, tried to rein in. I agree with Senator Lambie. It's an outrage that there are attempts to use this process to try to undermine the efforts and the role of the ABCC, which brings us to the situation where we have to go through this disallowance process. They on the other side don't have the courage to bring in legislation that will put in place their version of what they say will be an effective watchdog.

We know it's needed. I give Labor credit for the action that they took when they were in government last time and dealt with the BLF. Bob Hawke actually dealt with this behaviour once before. This government doesn't have the courage to do that effectively or properly. I had forgotten that Senator Shoebridge had worked with the BLF. He talked about his work on the green bans. I completely differentiate what occurred in Sydney with regard to the green bans from what I know happened on construction sites around this country, where concrete pours were disrupted, where companies were stood over so that they didn't supply materials to certain construction businesses that wouldn't do things the way the CFMEU wanted them to. It's an absolute outrage that we have to go through this process and not through a formal process, a genuine plan to fix the current structure if that is what Labor actually want to do. To hide behind the smokescreen of flags and stickers when we've heard colleague after colleague, particularly Senator Reynolds and Senator Hughes, get up and detail the way that women were spoken to and the way that women were treated on building sites is an absolute outrage—that they actually had to do that and that we are talking about that sort of behaviour on building sites. As for the excuse that it's a robust working environment, it has been said that this is a robust working environment, but we don't tolerate that sort of language and that sort of behaviour to women in this workplace. On what planet is a woman, someone going about their work, in any other workplace in this country than a building site treated in that way?

That's not a safe workplace. For somebody going onto a building site to be abused, to be threatened and to be spoken to in that matter is not a safe workplace, so any discussion from the other side that this is about workplace safety is a complete and utter crock as well. It's not. In fact those that are perpetuating that are creating unsafe workplaces. Those on the other side try and pass it off as flags and stickers. They hide behind, 'It's a robust workplace. It's about workplace safety.' Senator Shoebridge's suggestion that construction sites are unregulated I find distressing—