MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE
Senator O'NEILL (New South Wales) (16:45): I have to make some response to that contribution. I want to be clear in my opening remarks that the actions of the CFMEU were egregious in any decent minded Australian's perspective. Their corruption, their criminality and their violence have absolutely no place in representing the good Australian workers who expect so much more from their union and who are so vital to the construction industry that Australia really, really needs to function well.
How did we get to the situation where the CFMEU was enabled to be in the state that it is? Let me get some facts on the record here. The issues that we now see in the construction industry, which have been pulled up by the intervention of the Albanese government, happened under the watch of the former Liberal-National government.
The corruption, the criminality and the violence that are embedded in the construction industry flourished on the watch of the Liberal-National coalition. They failed, and the entity that they used—which they still continue to celebrate in this place—was the very much discredited body known as the ABCC. What's happened since Labor has come to power has been a tough response to the reality of criminality that overtook an Australian union.
Labor placed the CFMEU into administration. Labor appointed the administrator with strong powers to clean up the industry, and we do not resile from the task. Turning around a culture that is so disgraceful is going to take a considerable effort, and it won't happen overnight.
But we will not give up, and every challenge that emerges as cultural change is undertaken will be faced squarely and head on. In just 15 months, this administrator, who has been maligned in the chamber today, has achieved more than those opposite managed to do in a decade. They were the ones that created the platform to persecute players in the construction industry, not to protect workers.
They're the ones who allowed the flourishing of this terrible connection with bikie gangs and standover merchants. Their ABCC was inefficient and unable to deal with the problems that were known. In the wasted years of the Australian Building and Construction Commission, the infiltration of bikie gangs and organised crime elements was taking hold on the watch of those opposite.
They will be weeded out, and we have given a firm commitment to deliver, and continue to commit to delivering, an outcome that the Australian people need. What I'm surprised at is the moral outrage that seems to infect the debate at this point in time. Given that we do know the alleged offending occurred on the ABCC's watch, it beggars belief that the coalition continue to, in the midst of this debate and this challenge, push for a failed body, the ABCC, to come back.
We know that the ABCC spent taxpayers' resources prosecuting workers who were asking for women's toilets onsite, and they prosecuted union officials for having cups of tea. While they were doing that, they missed all this bikie stuff. It's a bit rich for them to come in now and try to start to direct traffic when, for nine years, they couldn't even read the signage.
I want to make sure that anybody listening to this debate understands that Labor is absolutely committed to ensuring strong, ethical unions do the work that our democracy demands—standing up for workers and working in concert with good employers to make things move forward for everybody in the national interest. Unions are fighting to make sure that, when customers harass people in our shops right across this country, workers get the support that they need.
We're looking after workers. We're enabling good unions to do their work, and we will not rest until the CFMEU issues are put to bed.