Maria Kovacic (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Women) | Hansard source

This evening I'm going to talk about something that really concerns me, and that concern was compounded again this week. Last night we had debate in this place in relation to schedule 1, part 9 of the Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Building Cooperative Workplaces No. 1) Bill 2026. That legislation allows for the Commonwealth to preference supply chains with union backed EBAs. What does that actually mean? It means that it allows the Commonwealth to discriminate for companies that have those EBAs in place. So if you have two like-for-like businesses and one has an EBA and one doesn't the government can choose the one with the EBA without it being discriminatory.

What else did we see last night? We saw the Prime Minister on 7.30. We saw the Prime Minister attempting to defend what is currently happening in terms of the revelations of even further corruption, criminal conduct and infiltration of organised crime in the construction sector, particularly in the CFMEU in Victoria. The Prime Minister said that he has no tolerance for corruption. The Prime Minister said that he knows that there is corruption in the construction industry. The Prime Minister said that he has sought assurances from the Victorian Premier, Jacinta Allan, that no taxpayer funds have gone into the pockets of organised crime. Do you know what Premier Jacinta Allan said today? She said that there was no corruption, that the $15 billion was because of inflation.