ADJOURNMENT

Senator KOVACIC (New South Wales) (21:02): For a generation of Australians, homeownership is becoming less a dream and more a distant prospect. House prices are now around 8.9 times the median household income, and young Australians are already being asked to save larger deposits for longer, while meeting increasing everyday costs. And yet, at precisely the moment when government should be making it easier for young Australians to save, invest and build a deposit, the Albanese Labor government has introduced tax changes that will make that task even harder.

New modelling from economists of Victoria University and the former chief economist of the New South Wales Parliamentary Budget Office shows what these changes could mean for an ordinary young Australian trying to get into their first home. Under one scenario, for a young Australian starting with a $50,000 investment portfolio and trying to build that into a $150,000 deposit for a $750,000 home, it would take around 20 years under the current system.

But, under the government's tax changes, that same task could take 28 years, eight more years—eight more years that is being sold to Australians as intergenerational equity, eight more years of renting, eight more years of trying to catch a housing market that always seems to be out of reach. There is another extraordinary finding. In modelling where a portfolio earns only one per cent of a real return, as much as 98 per cent of that real gain could be taxed under the new arrangements.

This problem was reported in the Australian this morning and is pretty straightforward. The system recognises the real gains for tax purposes, without giving the same recognition for real losses. The upside attracts tax, while the downside does not receive any equivalent offset.

Young Australians are constantly told to work hard, save, invest what you can responsibly and build something for your future. But, when they do, this government's answer is to tax them harder. You cannot say you want more Australians to own a home while making it harder for them to keep the deposit that they are saving.

The government cannot claim to stand for intergenerational fairness while putting forward policies that risk pushing the next generation further and further away from home ownership, and the government cannot keep putting new barriers in front of young Australians and then wonder why so many of them feel at a loss and feel that the Australian promise is slipping away.

But tax policy is only one part of the pressure being placed on housing, because, once an Australian has saved the deposit, secured the finance and is ready to build, there is another problem that is making it harder for young Australians to buy a home: the cost of construction in our country impacted by the corrupt and criminal conduct of the CFMEU. For almost a year now, I've been calling for a Senate inquiry into corruption, criminal conduct and the influence of organised crime in the construction sector.

Five times this Senate has had the opportunity to support this proposal, and five times the Australian Labor Party and the Greens have voted it down. This week, senators will have a sixth opportunity to show Australians that this parliament is serious about integrity, serious about transparency and serious about cleaning up an industry that builds the homes, the roads, the hospitals and the infrastructure that all Australians need.

Because the allegations we have seen are not minor, they go to the integrity of taxpayer funded construction projects and to allegations of payments involving organised crime figures and access to CFMEU controlled building sites. Former IBAC commissioner Robert Redlich has called what we are seeing an 'unprecedented historic scandal'. They are not my words.

Former Victorian ombudsman Deborah Glass has said the circumstances warrant a royal commission. Geoffrey Watson QC, who investigated the CFMEU and lifted the lid on $15 billion worth of corruption on Victorian infrastructure sites, said the Setka led branch was effectively a crime syndicate. They are not my words.

They are the words and the analysis of people who hold high office in our country whose job it is to investigate such matters, and yet this parliament still cannot bring itself to support a Senate inquiry. Australians can see what's happening. They're not stupid.

They know exactly what is going on. They understand these allegations, and they demand answers. That is why more than 62,000 Australians have now signed my petition calling for a Senate inquiry.

That number continues to grow. Last week, I sent a pledge to every member and Senator in this parliament. It wasn't complicated.

I didn't ask anyone to sign up to a party position or to endorse a particular agenda or policy. I simply asked them to say where they stand. Do you stand for integrity?

Do you stand for cleaning up corruption? Do you stand against criminal conduct, organised crime and bikie gangs having influence on our construction industry? I want to thank my coalition colleagues, whose signatures have been coming through thick and fast.

They have all been prepared to put their names to those principles and tell Australians plainly where they stand. I also acknowledge independent members of the House who are supporting this campaign, such as the member for Mackellar, who has signed the pledge and displayed it in her office window, and the members for Bradfield and Mayo, who have advised my office that they also support our campaign to end corruption in construction.

But what is extraordinary—or perhaps it is not—is that not a single Labor member has signed it. Not a single Greens member has signed it. I'm disappointed that Senator Roberts has left, because not a single member of One Nation has signed it either.

Not one of them has completed the simple task of telling Australians that they stand against corruption and criminality in the construction industry and the waste of taxpayer dollars. At some point, silence becomes its own statement. It tells a story.

If members and senators do not want Australians drawing conclusions from their refusal to sign, then there is a very simple solution: sign it. To the independents who have built political careers campaigning on transparency, accountability and integrity, this is your opportunity to demonstrate that those principles apply even when the politics are a little bit uncomfortable.

Stand by your convictions. Do what the people who elected you expected you to do when you are given a choice like this one. Cleaning up the corrupt and criminal conduct of the construction industry does not end with the CFMEU.

We must take a proactive approach and say that this conduct doesn't fit the standards for any worksite, especially when we are hearing concerns of former CFMEU members now moving to the ETU. The whole purpose of placing the CFMEU into administration was not to merely change the names on the office doors; it was to break the culture of lawlessness, intimidation and corruption that has become entrenched in parts of the union.

There's an obvious weakness in the administration's safeguards. A removed person from the CFMEU cannot, without the Fair Work Commission's approval, take office in another union, become employed or engaged by it, or act as a bargaining representative. But the law doesn't stop the removed person joining another union, and CFMEU members expelled for misconduct may fall outside restrictions altogether.

That matters because we know industrial influence doesn't begin and end with a job title. Membership provides access to union networks, workplaces, meetings and other members. Take, for example, the CFMEU New South Wales president, Rita Mallia.

She is a removed person. The administrator later found that she and other senior New South Wales officials had committed multiple serious breaches of duties owed to union members. Yet she is now CEO of Electrogroup, a group training organisation partnered with the ETU and described by the Financial Review as 'the ETU's training arm'.

The ETU operates alongside the CFMEU across the construction industry, and its New South Wales leadership was among the CFMEU's biggest backers during the administration fight. Labor told Australians the administration would stop the CFMEU's rotten culture spreading elsewhere. It hasn't, and it's time for it to stop.

Senate adjourned at 21:12