COMMITTEES
Senator BRAGG (New South Wales) (18:42): I understand why the Australian people feel so frustrated about the political class and why the Australian people feel that we are not giving good value to the citizens of this country. Perhaps one of the reasons why politicians are not well regarded in our society is that the institutions now have been so degraded. As we've seen this week from the research published by the Centre for Public Integrity, this is the most secretive government since the Keating government, some 30 years ago, in terms of its record of responding to acts of the freedom of information rules and in terms of its responses to orders of the Senate.
We now have to go to extraordinary lengths to get access to documents which have been ordered by the Senate, including a motion passed earlier today which now extends question time until documents are provided. The government is unhappy with that, but the government is a very secretive government, and it doesn't want to get to the bottom of things. I suspect the government will vote against this reference from Senator Kovacic.
I want to commend Senator Kovacic and Mr Wilson from the other place for pursuing these great matters of state, because the cost of building, the existence of corruption and the integrity of the economy are all matters that the Australian people would expect all elected officials to take seriously. We are leaders in our community, so people should act with the best of intentions.
They should not come to Canberra with the view that they will look after vested interests, no matter how close or how important they may personally be to those vested interests. The senators in this place are obliged to protect the interests and act in the interests of the people of the state they represent. I would say that there are too many occasions where that does not happen, and the motivation for self-preservation or to protect a particular interest or clique triumphs over the interests of the members of that state and of our country.
That is unfortunately where we are in Australia today. There has been a degradation of institutions. Many of the day-to-day institutions that people come in touch with that were established by this parliament, like the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, are utterly incompetent.
I've said many times that if you discover a corporate crime in Australia, you're better off reporting it to the media than to ASIC, because that way you'll get some action. How depressing is that! That is the case with the CFMEU caper.
The government pretend this is all something they've never heard of before, that these are people they don't know, that these crimes are news. Thank goodness for Nick McKenzie. I regret to read that Nick McKenzie has had to upgrade security in his house because someone tried to cut off the security cameras.
Someone got onto the roof of his house to remove vision that would, I imagine, capture people breaking into his house or doing something to him. He's been doing a great public service. He's been doing the government's job.
The government's job is to look after the people, but they've left it to Nick McKenzie. We have seen the pay-offs. After the May 2022 election, the government abolished the Australian Building and Construction Commission.
Which Australian was asking for that to happen? I haven't met anyone on the street anywhere in New South Wales that said: 'We have to get rid of that Building and Construction Commission. It's really making my life a misery.
We've got to get rid of that.' No-one has ever said that. The only reason to do that is that you are running the government in favour of these vested interests. The price the Australian people are paying is the fact that we now have an economy which is completely geared to serve these vested interests.
If you are wondering why inflation is up, investment is flat, unemployment is going up and 85 per cent of jobs created last year were in the non-market sector, it's because the government for vested interests are looking after their own flock; they're not interested in the rest of the community. That's why they took this step to abolish the Australian Building and Construction Commission.
They are distorting the public policy of this nation to serve these vested interests. The price young people are paying is this 30 per cent tax on new apartments. The data that comes out of Queensland shows that, when the CFMEU is on site, the poor person who wants to buy an entry-level apartment has to pay an extra 30 per cent to pay for their dodgy RDOs, dodgy days off, no concrete pours after 10 am, the criminal stuff, the mafia stuff, the bikies, threats to kill and everything else which increases the cost of business.
They are inflicting these costs onto younger Australians. I would have thought, having presided over the worst housing crisis in living memory, the government would try to cut the cost of building houses. They've got the worst homelessness crisis on record.
They've got the biggest population we've ever had. They've got the biggest collapse in per capita supply. Yet they've got a 30 per cent tax that they're sticking on people.
Thanks a lot. The Australian people, when they roll out of bed every day, ask themselves: 'What have I done to deserve this? I've worked my arse off, and I have to pay taxes and charges to the government because they want to pay off all these people.' It's not very good.
It's not a very good situation. I can see why people get so frustrated. We don't get any movement on these issues.
The Prime Minister says: 'I've cleaned it all up. This is all sorted. You don't need to worry about that because, as Christopher Pyne once said, "I've fixed it."' But he hasn't fixed it, and Nick McKenzie is doing a great public service by publishing these articles every six months.
This is like groundhog day. What's actually been revealed is that the union, which was put into administration, is still in business. It's still doing stuff.
In fact, Michael Crosby, who runs the CFMEU in the great state of New South Wales, says, 'We are looking at large, multiple-complex, residential construction,' and, 'It may push up costs.' Great! The good news keeps on rolling in. We've got the CFMEU back in business in New South Wales.
They're back on site. I've spoken to builders in the Newcastle region who are longstanding builders and who are now trying to get the CFMEU to come off their sites, because they're scared. They are afraid of being harassed and bullied by the mafia and by the bikies.
They are afraid. This is a problem of people's physical safety and their mental health, and this is a problem that, apparently, was going to be tidied up by this administrator. The Prime Minister obviously thinks that we are all stupid, because he said he would tidy this up, but he hasn't.
Perhaps the most galling part of all this is that the union in administration is still allowed to own and operate a major superannuation fund. The CFMEU, which wasn't closed down by Mr Albanese, owns the Cbus super fund. It owns 21 per cent of the shares in Cbus.
We see, today, an article in the AFR that says 'Wayne Swan's Cbus to pay $23.5m fine'. 'Wayne Swan's Cbus'—he's also the National President of the Australian Labor Party, of course. We live in a country full of howling conflicts. The rub here is that the $23 million sounds like a large number, doesn't it?
It does sound like a very large number, if I ask myself a rhetorical question. And it is a large amount of funds. Who's going to pay that?
Senator Scarr: The members. Senator BRAGG: The members are going to pay. Thank you for the interjection, Senator Scarr.
The members will pay that. The CFMEU, the same organisation that was closed down by the Prime Minister—out of business, run out of town, gone, never to be seen again—still own this fund. They're the shareholders.
They receive dividends. They pull millions of dollars out of the fund every year, even while they're in administration. The Cbus fund breaks the law, and they get a $23 million fine today.
The CFMEU take the dividends, but will they pay the fine? No. The members will pay that fine.
Again, I make the point: people are frustrated with this country. They're frustrated. They're disappointed that the standards are not being maintained.
The institutions are being degraded, and this is another example. Another example is the Housing Australia Future Fund. We have legislation in this Senate to prevent the criminal, corrupt mafia elements of the CFMEU from getting access to those funds.
We have a bill that says, if the Housing Australia Future Fund wants to do business with the CFMEU affiliated funds, investment funds or super funds, it can't. It's a prohibition. It's a reasonable prohibition because, apparently, this union was in administration.
We see round 1 of the Housing Australia Future Fund tender come through, and who are the biggest beneficiaries of the Housing Australia Future Fund? The big super funds. They received $2.8 billion—big super's big payday from Mr Chalmers and his Housing Australia Future Fund.
Again, who helped design the Housing Australia Future Fund? Who was part of the secret consultation that helped design the payments that would go through the tenders? Well, it was the big super funds.
They had roundtables and meetings with Mr Chalmers, or Dr Chalmers—whatever he likes to call himself. I think he's a fake doctor, actually. They had all these meetings with him, the fake doctor.
The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Cox ): Senator Bragg, just a reminder to refer to those members from the other place by their correct title. Senator BRAGG: The Treasurer has all these meetings. We know that they occurred.
We filed freedom-of-information requests to say, 'Can we please see these documents prepared by the agencies?' and of course the government said: 'No, you may not. You may never see these documents. These are secret documents.
Everything we do is secret because we're the most secretive government since the Keating government.' At least they are consistent! Then we lodged orders in the Senate to say: 'Can we please see these documents? We want to know how the government designed its scheme.' We were told: 'No.
We don't comply with orders in the Senate. We're too busy here or too corrupt or something. We can't do that.' So there it is.
We know that they were involved with the design of the payment. We know that the big super funds received $2.8 billion, the biggest winners of the housing fund. But we are not allowed to see the documents that were exchanged between Treasury, Mr Chalmers, Housing Australia and the super funds in 2022 and 2023.
They are secret. We have one institution left that's still in business and the government hasn't been able to hack to death, which is the Auditor-General. Thank goodness for the Auditor-General.
Thank God; I'm an atheist, but thank God. The Auditor-General have said that they will look at this scheme. That's good because the Auditor-General is beyond reproach.
The Albanese government cannot block, obfuscate, cut to pieces, defund, delete or destroy the Auditor-General. The Auditor-General will now go through and look at the design and the delivery of billions of dollars in taxpayer funds. For now, that's our best hope.
We will continue to try to get to the bottom of these things and we will support Senator Kovacic's reference—it's a very good reference—because, as opposition senators, we have an important role here to ensure that public funds are well spent and that programs are properly administered. That is the basic job. People would want us to do that.
We're trying to do it. The government shouldn't be afraid of transparency. They campaigned on integrity.
They should walk the walk. We will continue, no matter what obstacles are thrown before us. No matter how much sand is put in the gears, we will endure because this is a very important question of our democracy.
We want Australians to support our democracy. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: If there are no further contributions, I will now put the question that the motion moved by Senator Kovacic be agreed to. A division having been called and it being past 6.30 pm, that division will be placed on the Senate Order of Business for tomorrow.
The debate is adjourned accordingly.