MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE
Senator SHELDON (New South Wales—Chief Government Whip in the Senate) (16:55): Who's running the protection racket? It's actually a really good question. When Labor put in this proposition about putting an administrator in, what did we have?
We had nearly 10 years of the ABCC failing to prosecute or take appropriate action or direct action against workers and those that were breaching laws in that area. They also weren't taking action against employers. There are two sides to this coin.
There are those that we're now taking action against. Separately and independently, the administrator is taking action through the power that we gave them. Those opposite want to turn around and deregister the union.
That would have meant that John Setka and the 60 people that worked at the CFMEU in leadership roles—two-thirds of them—would still be there operating under the watch of those opposite, but with no regulation or laws covering them. No accountability. We kept the accountability.
We put an administrator in. Sixty people were taken out of operations, out of leadership roles. But there's also the flip side of the coin.
At the ABCC they were suing the union over trying to have women's toilets on a worksite, suing the union for half a million dollars with all the legal costs et cetera because of flags on building sites and suing union officials talking to workers about safety issues on worksites because they were having a cup of tea in the tearoom. That was the big call. That was a chihuahua having a go and barking, yapping and carrying on as if they were doing something.
But, since we put the rottweiler in there, we've seen 60 people move on. We've seen the great work that's being done by Michael Crosby as the administrator in New South Wales. That company got notoriety on the 60 Minutes show, where Nick McKenzie described Michael as doing a hell of a thing, going on national TV and calling out entities he saw as being involved in serious violence and intimidation.
He was talking about companies in that industry that had been carrying out some of the most notoriously bad things—not just putting people's lives at risk but stealing and thieving from workers and stealing from those decent companies that are always putting in bids for contracts. Then you go to what they say about deregistration. At the moment nothing unites that team on the other side except union busting.
What also unites them is when it comes down to this really critical issue about what the CFMEU would do if they were deregistered. I'll tell you what, there's this latest case over there in Western Australia, where the CFMEU have won a case for same job, same pay. They've won a 125 per cent wage lift for people doing the exact same job next to somebody else on a goldmine site.
If the CFMEU didn't exist, of course that wouldn't happen. Heaven forbid, they'd be really disappointed on the opposite side. They voted against the legislation along with One Nation anyway.
The Liberals and Nationals and One Nation teamed up together to vote against same job, same pay. They would have been happy because they would have had every dream come true. John Setka and his 60 others on building sites would be going on their merry way without any registration or accountability.
These companies that have been held to account through the brave work of people like Michael Crosby, the administrator in New South Wales, and this decision in Western Australia on same job, same pay simply wouldn't have happened. These are changes to make this industry a better industry. Part of that better program is a whole series of arrangements that are being entered into by the industry players.
There are lots of good industry players within both the union—let alone the workers that are in the union—and also companies and associations that run a number of those constructions through associations. They want to clean up the industry. They want to make sure that things are better.
They want to make sure that it's better for everybody. There want to make sure that, when you are bidding for a job, you don't have to bet somebody's life or their wages, you don't have to put sham contracting in, you don't have to steal from superannuation and you don't have to turn around and get killed at work.