Tony Sheldon (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Well, isn't it interesting? Here we have the Liberal Party, the LNP, talking about donations. But of course what they don't talk about is Gerry Hanssen, who has given at least $175,000 in donations to the Liberal Party since 2014—and this is a great person who's standing by women's rights! Marianka Heumann, a 27-year-old German backpacker, fell to her death on a Hanssen worksite in October 2016. Hanssen was fined $60,000 for health and safety violations. There have been multiple media reports about allegations of Hanssen Pty Ltd being involved in sham contracting and underpayments to workers. But where was the ABCC? They were nowhere to be found, because that would have meant that you had to go after one of the Liberal Party donors. Heaven forbid if that had happened!

Let's look at what's been happening with regard to the ABCC. And don't worry about what I've got to say. Let's start talking about what a number of judges have to say, because it's very enlightening. Justice North in 2017-18 blasted the ABCC for prosecuting two CFMMEU officials for having a cup of tea with a mate. Get that: 'teagate'! They just started spending tens upon tens upon tens of thousands of dollars on someone having a cup of tea! The judge called it a 'minuscule, insignificant affair'. He also said:

This is all external forces that are beating up what's just a really ordinary situation that amounts to virtually nothing.

And:

For goodness sake, I don't know what this inspectorate is doing.

He went on to say that 'when the ABCC uses public resources to bring the bar down to this level it really calls into question the exercise of the discretion to proceed'. The fact is, there are organisations—and so there should be—to hold employers, and everybody else, to account on what happens on building sites, workplaces, companies, corporations and this parliament. That's one of the things that's really important.

We didn't see a positive duty-of-care support to prevent sexual harassment from Respect@Work from the opposition, because the coalition didn't want to support that. They didn't want to support that. Of course they didn't want to support it, because they're not about supporting people. They're about supporting people like Gerry Hanssen. They did not want to support industrial manslaughter laws when 154 construction workers died between 2016 and 2020, because that would be holding people like Gerry Hanssen, those sorts of people, to account. They don't want to do that. That's just too difficult.

Justice Kerr, slamming the ABCC in 2021, described a case of the ABCC over-egging its case, being a battleship in full steam which had difficulty turning and conducting proceedings as a blood sport. That's how a judge— Justice Kerr—described the ABCC's approach in 2021. But don't worry! There are some even more recent cases.

In 2022 Justice Katzman criticised the ABCC for misrepresentation of evidence and filing court proceedings that were unnecessarily inflammatory. Then you go to the ABCC spending $488,000 pursuing Lendlease over Eureka flags. Then you go to $495,000 unsuccessfully pursuing a union because they demanded a women's toilet on a work site. You've got the cup of tea, you've got toilet-gate, you've got tea-gate and you've got flag-gate. They're spending a pile of money which judge after judge has said is inappropriate and immaterial. This does not actually turn around. But don't worry! They want to tell us that this is all about productivity.

The opposition tells us this is all about productivity. Let's look at the actual productivity in the construction industry. You won't be surprised that, during the period the ABCC has been in existence—labour productivity was down 2.4 per cent in 2017-18. Maybe they will get their act together and it will improve! Labour productivity was down 2.6 per cent in 2018-19. Maybe they will reach a crescendo of good productivity! In 2019-20 it went down another 2.6 per cent. Outside the time when the ABCC has been there, productivity has been improving because companies have been improving their arrangements, improving their skills and improving their performance rather than turning around and beating the drum on behalf of the government.