COMMITTEES
Senator HUME (Victoria) (18:05): I rise to support the motion, moved my colleague Senator Kovacic, for the establishment of an inquiry of the Senate Education and Employment References Committee to scrutinise the effectiveness or, more accurately, the spectacular failure of the Albanese government's administration of the CFMEU. My colleague Senator Sheldon across the chamber suggested this is an ideological witch-hunt about unions.
It absolutely is not. You would be hard-pressed to find anybody in this chamber that doesn't think that unions, when well run and well managed, are a fundamentally important part of civil society today. That's not what we're talking about here.
We're talking about the CFMEU, which is corrupt and has criminal behaviour and is not improving under the administrator. In fact, they're laughing at us. They're laughing at you.
They're laughing at you every single day. In my home state of Victoria, things are getting worse, not better, with the CFMEU. So I ask colleagues across the chamber this one simple question: in what world is it reasonable to refuse an inquiry into a union that's been infiltrated by organised crime, that's riddled with corruption and that is now shielded by a government that simply will not act?
I will come back to why that is. Fifteen months after the administration of the CFMEU was established, we are not seeing reform; we're seeing scandal after scandal. We're seeing a protection racket.
We're seeing organised crime flourish, and it's happening under this government's watch. Just yesterday, notorious underworld figure Mick Gatto posted a video of himself strolling around Port Phillip Bay complaining that the media won't leave him alone. Oh, my heavens!
The media won't leave you alone, Mick Gatto? How awful it must be to feel intimidated! How awful it must be to feel pursued!
Perhaps the media wouldn't bother Mick Gatto quite so much if he stopped collecting payments from construction companies—payments that the AFP now allege were designed to prevent what are referred to as 'orchestrated stoppages' at building sites. Let's call that exactly what it is. This is industrial extortion, and it's disguised as mediation.
Now the AFP has entered the scene, finally confirming a system where construction firms have been paying off underworld figures to keep projects moving. These payments have been invoiced as consultancy services. To put this in a parlance that those across the chamber might appreciate, what this really is is a threat.
It's your money or your life. Where is the administrator in all of this? Mark Irving KC was appointed to clean up the CFMEU and restore integrity to that institution, but, instead, he simply enabled dysfunction.
He's protected the powerbrokers and he's failed to act, even when the rot is festering right in front of him. Let's take that case that was mentioned by Senator Kovacic of Mr John Perkovic, who was sacked last week for accepting bribes. Just four months ago, this man, Mr John Perkovic, was promoted to the deputy leader of the CFMEU by the administrator that Labor want to protect, that Labor put in place and that Labor say is doing a terrific job.
He promoted this man who then took bribes. These allegations didn't just come up last week; they were raised a year ago. They were raised a year ago, and the whistleblower was ignored.
And you say that this administrator is doing an adequate job! It wasn't until journalists exposed this corruption that it came to light. We shouldn't have to rely on the media to do the administrator's job, and we shouldn't have to rely on the media to take action where Labor has failed to do so.
It's the media, not the administrator, that is taking on the job of reform. As 60 Minutes revealed, Mr Perkovic wasn't just corrupt; his role was so useful that he was gifted a gold bracelet by none other than that underworld figure so well renowned in my home town of Melbourne, Mr Mick Gatto—the Mr Mick Gatto who wants to live a quiet life away from media scrutiny, at least according to his social media.
We still don't know exactly how much the administrator knew about this, what action was taken or whether action was taken at all. The administrator quietly disbanded his anticorruption teams—the teams that he established. He disbanded them!
Investigators were let go. Allegations were left ignored. Whistleblowers were left unprotected.
That is not oversight. That is an abdication of duty. That is—let's say it—a cover-up.
Then there's Mr Zach Smith, the head of the Victorian CFMEU and a member of the Australian Labor Party National Executive—a man that literally sits shoulder to shoulder with our prime minister at Labor Party functions. When the Prime Minister sits at the table of his party's most powerful governing body, he doesn't just see Senator Ayres, Senator Brown, Senator Ciccone or Senator Grogan; he also sits across the table from Mr Zach Smith.
You all do. Why is that good enough? How do you not lose sleep over this—that this man is sitting at your table?
Can you guarantee that those senators that I have just mentioned will be voting against this motion simply out of embarrassment for the man that sits with them at the table of the national executive? This is a man who organised secret meetings in parks with underworld figures, including Mick Gatto, and still socialises with John Setka, who you all roundly condemn—but somehow it's kind of okay for his mate to sit at the national executive table with you guys.
This is a man that plays cards with John Setka. All the while, the Fair Work Commission says that John Setka's ongoing influence would be a matter of grave concern. Well, if it's a matter of grave concern, just do something about it!
Don't cover it up. Don't turn a blind eye. This is corruption at the highest possible level, and you are letting it go.
That's not your job here. It's not reform; it's simply a restoration of the old regime, and it's done by stealth. It's not just happening behind closed doors.
This week we learnt that Victoria Premier Jacinta Allan was briefed more than a year ago about misconduct on Victoria's Big Build projects. Confidential emails show that senior bureaucrats had raised the alarm over CFMEU operatives that were targeting non-union surveyors and demanding that they be replaced. This was over a year ago.
And it was not a political attack. This wasn't the opposition saying something in the chamber. This wasn't somebody wagging their finger in a television interview.
This was senior bureaucrats telling the premier of the state, and they were urgent ministerial briefings. Do you know what she did? Nothing—absolutely nothing.
The state government ignored those briefings and ignored those warnings. I can only guess that it was because they knew. They knew all along that the CFMEU was pushing up prices and behaving in a corrupt, disruptive and expensive manner on Victorian government projects, on the taxpayers' dime.
They knew and they did nothing. When it comes to crime in the state of Victoria, Labor looks the other way and never more quickly than when the CFMEU is involved. Why is that?
It's because the CFMEU is not just a rogue union; it's part of the Labor Party machine, and you are all frightened of it. You are terrified of it. We cannot afford to have a frightened government.
You have to step up because other people are paying the price—the people that you are here to represent. The CFMEU donates millions of dollars to the Labor Party. Its leaders hold internal power.
It infiltrates even our superannuation system, and, when corruption is exposed, Labor choses to protect the structure, not the public. It's why one of the first actions of the Albanese government was to abolish the ABCC, an organisation they say was toothless. They say it was toothless, but that's because they removed its teeth.
They removed its teeth and then said, 'It couldn't do the job it was asked to do.' That's nonsense. Give it some teeth and let it do its job. If it had the real powers it was set out to have, then it would have been able to do something, unlike, dare I say, the administrator that you have appointed.
When you abolished the ABCC, that wasn't reform. That was a pay-off. Nobody requested that—nobody other than the CFMEU.
If you were not beholden to the CFMEU, there would have been no reason to get rid of the ABCC, but you are entirely beholden to them. It's costing the country so dearly. It's estimated that the CFMEU adds 30 per cent to construction costs around this country—30 per cent.
And then we wonder why we have a housing crisis and why it's so expensive to build anything from infrastructure through to new power generation through to a residential home. It's a CFMEU tax. That's what it is.
And you know what? It would be a scandal anywhere else in the world, but, for some reason, here we're so used to it. We're so used to it.
We say, 'Oh, that's just the CFMEU.' It's taken as a given, and every young Australian is paying the price for this. To every young Australian trying to get into the housing market: you are paying the price for CFMEU corruption and you are paying the price for a Labor government that will do nothing about it. When whistleblower Charles Farrugia exposed even more jobs handed to union cronies, mates and even bikie gang members—which is quite extraordinary—on publicly funded projects no less, these concerns were met with intimidation, silence and threats.
The parliament simply cannot ignore this any longer, so I say to the Greens and to the crossbench and, yes, to those members of the Labor party with a skerrick of integrity: if you care about your party's honesty, if you care about the democratic process and if you care about the public that you say you are here to represent, then you face a really important choice today.
Do you protect the power structure of the CFMEU, or do you vote to clean it up—not pretend to clean it up but actually clean it up? The coalition is bringing this motion to ensure that the administrator, who refuses to respond to correspondence, fronts this parliament and answers pretty basic questions. Why was Mr Perkovic promoted?
What on earth prompted him to do that? Why are criminals treated with a caution rather than an action? Why were the corruption teams disbanded?
And what is being done to cut the cash flows, the slush funds and the protection rackets? This parliament established the CFMEU administration, and this parliament has a duty to find out whether it's delivering on what it was promised, because the CFMEU are laughing at us. They're laughing at you.
Why are they getting away with it? Let's start with the $3 million that was donated to the Labor Party in one year just before the 2022 election. Even when the union was under administration, it donated nearly $800,000 last financial year—extraordinary!
No wonder you do not want the administrator to be under further scrutiny. No wonder you're happy to turn a blind eye to the extraordinarily bad, corrupt behaviour—criminal behaviour—going on within this union because they are your paymasters, and all Australians are paying a price. If this motion is blocked, the message is crystal clear: corruption will continue because this government prefers silence over scrutiny.
This isn't just about an inquiry or a reference or a notice of motion; this is about who you are. This is about your character. This is about our government's character and integrity.
Are you really going to enable this bad behaviour for which all Australians pay but young Australians pay the most? Are you going to turn a blind eye, or are you going to step up and do something? If you don't step up and do something, if you do turn a blind eye, if you say that that's someone else's problem, well, you're not just ignoring it; you're enabling it.
This is on you. Do you think that the people that put you in government expect more? I do.
I expect more from my government. So get on and do it. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator O'Neill ): I take the opportunity to remind senators that the use of the term 'you' leads to a descent in the nature of debate.
I just remind you all of that. Address remarks to me and speak in the third person.