Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Building Cooperative Workplaces No. 1) Bill 2026

Mr VENNING (Grey) (13:03): Here is more legislation from this Labor government. The Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Building Cooperative Workplaces No. 1) Bill 2026 is the government's response to a surging backlog at the Fair Work Commission. Officially, it's about the concept of cooperative workplaces.

But let us be honest—beneath these necessary administrative fixes lies a union agenda. Separately, this bill makes aggressive amendments to the Fair Work Act, allowing the Commonwealth to actively preference companies that hold enterprise agreements with unions in government contracting. These reforms are unlinked.

One is an administrative necessity; the other is a brazen ideological stitch up by Labor. This is classic Labor. They favour big businesses who can afford massive compliance departments, and they overwhelmingly favour the union bosses who fund their campaigns.

Speaking of which, you have to marvel at the enduring romance between the Labor Party and the CFMEU. It is truly the great love story. Romeo and Juliet had Verona; Labor and the CFMEU have construction sites and slush funds.

They are like a couple who keeps breaking up in public, deleting the photos off Instagram but then secretly texting each other late at night when the campaign bills are due. Yesterday, the Labor Party rammed through a motion which effectively guillotines debate on this profoundly consequential bill. The suspension motion itself is a pathetic, cynical wedge.

It was supposedly moved to enable members to attend yesterday evening's solemn ceremony at the War Memorial and yet it conveniently contained a series of gags on highly controversial legislation. When the manager and deputy manager of opposition business rightfully tried to move amendments, Labor mercilessly gagged the debate. The Leader of the House's motion means debate on the second reading is abruptly cut off at 5.30.

This is undemocratic. Furthermore, it aggressively limits debate on the consideration in detail stage, allowing the maximum time of a mere 10 minutes per detailed amendment. Consideration in detail is precisely when we get to apply the blowtorch to the technical elements of a bill but we will not get to do that here.

Why? Because the Labor Party fundamentally does not want parliamentary scrutiny. Genuine scrutiny will clearly expose that this is a complete love-in with the unions.

Just as we saw with Labor's massive industrial relations agenda last term, they are up to their exact same old trick again—ramming bad legislation through our parliament. What's new? Now while the coalition supports the vast majority of the practical elements within this bill, Labor have deliberately shoehorned in bad faith provisions, essentially forcing the opposition into a position where we must oppose it.

The hypocrisy from the Prime Minister on this issue is staggering. Let us look at his own words regarding what he famously called 'wedge-islation'. In his very first press conference as Prime Minister he sanctimoniously declared he 'looked forward to leading a government that makes Australians proud, one that does not seek to divide or wedge, but seeks to bring people together peacefully.' In his very first caucus address, he stated Labor wanted to be inclusive, claiming: The former government sat around and talked about how to wedge the other side of politics.

As opposition leader, he constantly accused the coalition of trying to promote 'wedge-islation'. He claimed we were 'a government in search of an agenda'—always looking for division, never looking for unity. He was in the media claiming he wanted to bring people together after a decade of division.

He repeated this exact same script ad nauseam. Yet, exactly what do we have before us here today in this parliament? We have the absolute textbook definition of 'wedge-islation'.

The government has explicitly warned that legislative changes were desperately needed to address the Fair Work Commission workload crisis, but they deliberately bundled these sensible reforms with extreme ideological procurement amendments they fully knew the coalition would never support. Because, of course, the coalition supports practical, common sense reforms that help the Fair Work Commission deal with this crippling workload.

We fundamentally believe that justice delayed is justice denied. However, the government should not use sensible commission reforms as a convenient cover for passing entirely unrelated, highly damaging, radical union-centric procurement and contracting changes. Our demand is simple, and it is reasonable.

The bill must be split: pass the Fair Work Commission reforms immediately, and separately scrutinise the procurement bargaining provisions. Commonwealth procurement should always be based on value for money, capability and compliance with the law, not on whether it's a union. It should never be based on whether a business has signed the preferred industrial instrument of the Labor Party's militant union mates.

We have seen exactly what happens when procurement policy is ruthlessly used to advantage union controlled arrangements. It inevitably risks higher costs for taxpayers, significantly reduced market competition and a highly toxic pay-to-play workplace culture. This culture actively entrenches corruption and maliciously shouts out lawful, hardworking businesses.

The procurement provisions risk pushing union covered agreements straight through Commonwealth contracting and cascading brutally down the entire supply chain. Let me outline the specific Fair Work Commission reforms that we do support. Up until the consequential court case involving Coles Supply Chain and Milford, the normal way the commissioner conducted general protections or unlawful termination cases was to proceed straight to the early dispute resolution stage.

Even if an employer vehemently claimed there'd been no dismissal, the commission did not need to formally resolve these complex disputes upfront immediately. Milford disastrously changed this procedure, resulting in the commission having to deal with threshold jurisdictional legal obligations first. This made the entire process considerably slower, highly formal and excruciatingly expensive.

The president estimates that about 600 cases a year now suffer through this delayed process. The amendments here sensibly clarify the position, allowing the commission to reduce unnecessary preliminary legal arguments and to genuinely help parties resolve disputes efficiently. The bill also practically creates a framework for the president to delegate certain procedural powers in unresolved dismissal and unlawful termination disputes to senior commission staff, which is of course helpful.

This allows many simple admin tasks to be handled swiftly, allowing matters to proceed to consent, arbitration or court. The bill powerfully allows the commission to dismiss unfair deactivation and unfair termination applications where they are demonstrated to be frivolous or vexatious or clearly have no reasonable prospects of success. Crucially, it allows the commission to make orders preventing relentless litigants from making further specified applications once their substantive application has already been decisively dismissed, preventing a massive waste of public resources.

Furthermore, the bill allows the commission to intelligently decide certain contested matters strictly on the papers without holding formal contested hearings. This saves valuable time and money while rigorously preserving procedural fairness, provided that both involved parties explicitly consent. We also acknowledge the minor amendments such as updating the National Construction Industry Forum membership, providing travel allowances for the Road Transport Advisory Group and granting more time for the administrator of the CFMEU to prepare vital financial statements.

However, we maintain deep reservations regarding the new standalone road transport contractor high-income threshold. These existing high-income thresholds deliberately exclude workers who are deemed to have sufficient bargaining power to seamlessly manage their own commercial arrangements outside of the strictly regulated statutory industrial safety net. Creating an industry-specific carve out purely for road transport contractors effectively pulls a defined class of independent commercial contractors unwillingly back into the complex Fair Work system.

We are yet to see any credible evidence to support these specific provisions, which is why they should be subject to a Senate inquiry. I turn to the most controversial, destructive part of this bill: the massive sweeping changes to government procurement preferencing. In the October budget, the government committed to establishing a secure jobs code.

The consultation paper heavily hinted at radically altering public contracting. It suggested requiring entities to 'ensure that enterprise agreements used on government-funded projects are genuinely agreed'. Yet, since submissions closed in February, there has been absolute deafening silence—until now.

The Gillard government introduced similar fair work principles in 2009, making compliance a condition for participation in procurement. The Abbott government rightly repealed those restrictive principles. Now this bill makes dangerous amendments to the Fair Work Act, allowing government to explicitly preference companies with enterprise agreements tied directly to employee organisations and unions.

Currently, the Fair Work Act strictly prohibits discrimination against an employer during public procurement. This means no-one, literally not even the mighty Commonwealth, can legally prefer one company over another simply because it has a union affiliated enterprise agreement. This bill shatters that vital protection.

It deliberately creates a massive exemption allowing the Commonwealth to aggressively preference employers whose employees are covered by a union covered enterprise agreement. Critically, this is shockingly one-directional. It only excuses discrimination that inherently favours enterprise agreement coverage.

There is absolutely no equivalent exemption for preferencing a non-agreement employer. Worse still, this bill creates a terrifying new concept called a Commonwealth contractual arrangement chain to brutally enforce these new laws. If the Commonwealth contracts company A and company A subcontracts company B, company B is legally protected if it brutally preferences an employee with a union covered enterprise agreement, because its overarching contract demands it.

This means this insidious bargaining incentive can aggressively flow down the entire supply chain, completely infecting every single level of contracting. Why are these provisions so terrifyingly concerning? Because they limit fundamental freedom of association and completely obliterate the central procurement principle of value for taxpayer money.

They transform Commonwealth procurement into a blunt weapon for pushing union agreements onto fiercely independent, local small businesses. Let me return to Labor's romantic partner, the CFMEU. If you want to know what this bill achieves, you only need to look at the explosive Watson report into the horrific corruption and misconduct in the CFMEU's Victorian construction branch, Rotting from the top.

Watson systematically found that the enterprise agreement system thoroughly corrupted, describing it as utterly brazen, old-fashioned, pay-to-play corruption. Watson found there was absolutely no genuine bargaining occurring. A CFMEU official arrogantly told a contractor executive that nothing would be changed in the agreement, proudly proving that no actual genuine negotiation happened.

Independent Treasury modelling estimated it skyrocketed project costs by 25 per cent. Stakeholders are absolutely united in their profound alarm. Split the bill now.

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