Andrew Bragg (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Housing and Homelessness) Share this | Hansard source

The reason this matter of public importance is before the chamber today is that, on the weekend, we discovered that the CFMEU in New South Wales is back in business and wanting to get back in the game in terms of involvement in apartment builds. We are living through the greatest housing crisis in Australia's modern history, and we now see the Labor Party allowing the CFMEU to come back to make it even worse. These are the people that brought you the housing crisis. If you're a younger person, you are exposed by the Labor-CFMEU alliance, which has added a 30 per cent premium, in some cases, to new apartment builds. For many younger Australians, their first house will not be a standalone brick or weatherboard; it will be a small apartment in Melbourne, Sydney or Brisbane. The CFMEU's 30 per cent tax is a punitive tax on younger people.

How do we find ourselves in this situation? I can tell you that this has always been a government for vested interests. One of the first acts of this government was to abolish the Building and Construction Commission, which was holding the CFMEU in check. In fact, the Prime Minister said at the time, back in 2022: 'The ABCC has been a disgraceful organisation. It targets unions, particularly the CFMEU.' That is a very good quote because we subsequently found out from the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age investigation 'Building bad' that the CFMEU is actually Australia's Mafia. They're into all sorts of dreadful business—bikies, loan sharking, bribery, violence and all kinds of threats and intimidation. This was exposed by the newspapers, but apparently this was a new story to Labor. They didn't know anything about this. They feigned shock and said that they would rush legislation into this parliament to put the CFMEU into administration.

The whistleblowers were very brave to come out and speak against the CFMEU, because they are, of course, running the risk that they may end up at the bottom of the harbour wearing concrete boots. One Mr Robbie Cecala said: 'It wasn't about workers anymore. It was about power and fear. You couldn't say no.' That's what he says about the CFMEU's intimidation. Massive cash bribes, death threats—you name it. The position of the Australian government is that they thought it was more important to protect a militant union that had broken the law to the point where it was adding a 30 per cent premium onto young people. Now we see Mr Crosby declare that the CFMEU wants to do in Sydney what it has already done in Victoria and parts of Brisbane.

The other thing I want to say before I hand over to someone else is that the Cbus Property organisation, which is part of the CFMEU, is very interesting. Mr Darren Greenfield, who's currently before various tribunals looking at his own alleged corruption, said of the subcontractor's selection process on Cbus property that they'd three names, they would ask him which one's good and he would just tick the box for them, and that's how it would go. So, at the end of the day, it is a disgrace that the first order of business for this government was to remove an organisation which was focused on getting better law enforcement in that sector. The newspapers have done their job and shown what a disgraceful judgement that was for this government, and they have exposed the systemic corruption that we see in this sector. Now, we have a government which has failed on housing, saying, 'Well, we don't care if these guys are back in business in New South Wales; in fact, we're not going to do anything.' After spending over three years and having spent billions of dollars to build fewer houses than the last government, the Labor Party now want to inflict the CFMEU on Australia's biggest city in relation to new apartment builds. This is a price that young people will pay, and the only question the Australian people should be asking themselves is: what have they done to deserve this? Kamahl used to say, 'Why are people so unkind?' And I say to the Labor Party: why are you so unkind to young Australians?