Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

It's going to be a long afternoon if I have to keep asking the questions and we do not get the answers. Again, there is an entire industry watching these proceedings. They would genuinely like to know what exposure they have to the likes of John Setka, the most militant union in Australia, the construction division of the CFMMEU. This is genuine questioning. You're abolishing a body, and that's your decision—I accept it's an election commitment—but there is also a transfer of powers or not. You have said on the Hansard record, 'We are confident that there are no gaps'. To date we've discovered there are some gaps. Minister, with all due respect, answers such as, 'We are confident we've given them money'—that's not the line of questioning I'm going down. We are going to go through each power they had and whether or not it transferred over. I'm going to have to assume, if you cannot give me an answer—because you have got advisers there—it is going to be no. Then later today we're going to have to go through what you mean when you say you are confident that there are no gaps.

With respect to employers within the building and construction industry, can you detail the powers that are specifically available—not to the Fair Work Commission—to the Fair Work Ombudsman, and take me to where they are, in relation to stoppage of work by a union because a subcontractor would not enter into a union endorsed EBA?