Sarah Henderson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to raise serious concerns about a secret funding agreement between the current member for Corangamite, Libby Coker, and the construction division of the CFMMEU, headed by John Setka. This is a dirty, rotten deal shrouded in secrecy, in threats and in factional war games, and it involves the most militant law-breaking union in the country. According to a report in The Age newspaper last July, Ms Coker owes the CFMMEU hundreds of thousands of dollars. This was the amount pumped into her election campaign by union bosses at the last federal election. The union also provided dozen of campaign volunteers. John Setka is now demanding this money be repaid. Libby Coker was more than happy to sell her soul to the country's most militant union, which has been fined over $19.3 million and counting for breaking the law on average more than twice a week for the last 16 years or so. Right now, the CFMMEU and 65 of its representatives are before the courts across 34 separate matters brought by the Australian Building and Construction Commission, facing allegations of hundreds of suspected contraventions of workplace laws.

What is the basis of this debt to one of Australia's most militant unions? Precisely how much is owed and why? So far, Ms Coker refuses to provide details. We know that she, along with the member for Cooper, Ged Kearney, defected from the industrial Left faction of the Victorian Labor Party to the Socialist Left faction. But I say: what is the price of doing so?

As I called for last July, the people of Corangamite deserve a full and honest explanation. Ms Coker rode into parliament on the back of the CFMMEU. The people of Corangamite deserve to know what has gone on. We've seen the court find the CFMMEU engaged in a form of extortion by inventing false safety claims against a New South Wales crane company in a bid to intimidate them into doing the union's bidding. We've seen them fined by the court for placing workers in danger in Tasmania, harassing and intimidating female public servants and police in New South Wales, and pressuring workers at a project in Queensland into joining the union and using their entire pay cheques to pay for union fees. We have seen the CFMMEU fined by the court for kicking non-union apprentices off worksites, for repeated unlawful entries, blockades and threats on Melbourne construction sites, and for unlawful stoppages across multiple worksites across Brisbane. I say: shame.

Bob Hawke had the courage to call them out. In 2015, in reference to the CFMEU, he said:

It is just appalling. I mean, I wouldn't tolerate it. You know what I did with the Builders Labourers Federation—I would throw them out.

All of these issues have been exposed by the same tough cop on the beat, the ABCC, and yet this is the very same regulator that Mr Albanese and the Labor Party have now pledged to scrap. They've pledged to reduce oversight of the militant CFMMEU. When you factor in that the ABCC has not only taken action to crack down on the CFMMEU but also recovered millions of dollars in wages and entitlements for thousands of employees in the building and construction sector, Labor's determination to get rid of the regulator is even more absurd. It points to one thing: John Setka and the CFMMEUs' influence over the Labor Party is alive and well. With the CFMMEU donating more than $7 million to the Labor Party since 2013—money the Labor Party is very happy to accept—it is no wonder. As for the lacklustre Ms Coker, who has done so little to fight for her constituents, the people of Corangamite deserve to know the price she paid to get herself elected.