COMMITTEES

Senator BROCKMAN (Western Australia—Deputy President and Chair of Committees) (18:20): Through you, Acting Deputy President O'Neill, first, I'm going to start with dispensing with this strawman that those opposite have set up. Quite frankly, I would expect better from Senator Sheldon, although I expect he is deeply embarrassed by what has happened in the CFMEU and what has been revealed coming out of the CFMEU in the past two years, because it reflects so badly not just on that union but on the Labor Party and the union movement as a whole.

The first strawman I want to dispense with is this idea that the ABCC was a failure and did not deal with corrupt companies. It did deal with corrupt companies. It had a direct responsibility to deal with the corrupt companies.

The trouble is that, when you have an industry in which corruption has become embedded via what is now clearly a corrupt and criminal organisation in the CFMEU, it does spread through other parts of the industry. There is no doubt about that. There were companies that were prosecuted by the ABCC.

The idea that it did nothing is an absolute nonsense. Let me give you just one week in 2018, when there were five court judgements against the CFMEU's conduct, handing out $822,000 in fines in one week. The ABCC against Ravbar in the Federal Court found that the CFMEU engaged in unlawful action by blockading a construction site because the crane company hired for the job refused to sign a CFMEU deal.

This was in 2018, before this government was in power and when the ABCC was in place. Yet, when the need for the administration of the CFMEU came up, this government was like, 'We didn't know about this. We didn't know there was anything bad happening in the industry or with the CFMEU.' One week—$822,000 in fines.

The CFMEU was also found to have undertaken a campaign of discrimination and coercion against Universal Cranes because they got in their way. Justice Reeves found that a high-ranking CFMEU official contravened many sections of the Fair Work Act or discrimination provisions when they blockaded the site for unlawful purposes. In another case, Justice Vasta found that a CFMEU official had acted in a most abhorrent way, and went on to find: … these were not the actions of some over-exuberant maverick of the CFMEU; these were the actions of the President himself. … There has been no condemnation, or even apology, for the actions of Mr Hanna on this day from the CFMEU.

Justice Vasta said: It is no understatement to describe the CFMEU as the most recidivist corporate offender in Australian history. When it came to light that there was corruption in the CFMEU, this government said, 'What a shock! There's corruption in the CFMEU.' We have known this for years.

We tried to toughen up the laws for the ABCC. We were met with a wall of opposition from those opposite, and they know that. That's why they are so deeply embarrassed by the failings that are now coming to light through this administration process.

The fact that corruption has now infected the administration process is a serious issue. It's one that has to be dealt with, and, if it's not going to be dealt with by this place, where is it going to be dealt with? If we do not pass this motion to have this inquiry, how are we going to have any certainty about the mistakes of the past where the Labor government effectively turned a blind eye to what was happening in that industry?

I was there in those many Senate estimates hearings. The Labor Party ran a protection racket for the CFMEU, time and time again, until the egregious activity came to light to such a degree that they couldn't ignore it anymore and put that organisation into administration. But now we find that the corruption in the industry and the corruption in the CFMEU has actually infected the administrator itself.

It isn't good enough. This is driving up costs. Again, reports from before the CFMEU went into administration that showed that the activities of the CFMEU were driving up construction costs by up to 30 per cent were ignored by the Labor Party—'Nothing to see here.' In fact, there's still apparently nothing to see here, because a member of the CFMEU sits on the Labor Party's national executive.

This is not good enough. This is corruption infecting a sector of the Australian economy to such a degree that our call at the time of the administration that the CFMEU should be deregistered as a union was the correct one. This Labor government chose not to do that.

They chose instead to appoint an administrator. But, now, there is a serious cloud over that process. It is incumbent upon this Senate to examine that cloud, to examine what is going on within the administration and to make sure that all Australian businesses within the construction sector and all Australian workers within the construction sector operate in a sector that is not riddled with corruption and full of thuggery, standover tactics and extortion.

If you vote against this motion, you are effectively endorsing those kinds of practices.