CFMEU investigations

19th of March 2025, 3:18 pm
Parliament of Victoria | Legislative Council

David ETTERSHANK (Western Metropolitan)

I rise to make a contribution on this motion from Mr Mulholland. I have been overwhelmed by where this discussion has gone in the last few speeches, to a sort of global organised crime conspiracy, but we will come back to that. As has been alluded to, it has been nine months since the opposition last brought a CFMEU motion into this chamber. In the words of Yogi Bear, I have this feeling of ‘Oh, no, it is deja vu again,’ because it is deja vu again; it is the same stuff that was dragged up in July of last year. I think we are going to cover much of the same ground, except we now have gone from a royal commission into the construction division of the CFMEU – although they just talk about the CFMEU, which is a much bigger entity, as Mr Batchelor alluded to – to now apparently a royal commission into global organised crime and everything in between.

First and foremost, let us just get to a certain thing that I think we all can agree on: there are deeply, deeply disturbing elements that are correctly identified in this motion that strike to corruption and that strike to violence against women. Both are intolerable. Both are crimes. Both can and should be prosecuted with the full force of the law however and wherever they occur. I think we can all agree on that basic principle, and then probably we go in different directions.

Reading this motion one might get the sense that these crimes are happening in some sort of a legal process vacuum – that 60 Minutes and Nick McKenzie have shown this up, and I want to come back to the question of the investigative journalism, because it has been outstanding – but that is simply not the case. Currently we have, working on the construction division of the CFMEU – and I would also hope we can agree, apart from the criminal question, that we are talking about the construction division of the CFMEU, not the broader union –

Ryan BATCHELOR (Southern Metropolitan):

How do you know the difference between the divisions?

David ETTERSHANK (Western Metropolitan)

We will come to that as well. Currently we have running Operation Hawk by Victoria Police, and we have Operation Rye by the Australian Federal Police. A lot of this is from my discussion last year. We have the implementation of the Wilson review, which made recommendations specifically on Victorian government sites and is, as I understand it, the subject of forthcoming legislation. We have a very vigorous administration of the Victorian construction division of the CFMEU, with multiple investigations running off that. We have the Fair Work Commission’s ongoing investigation into improper conduct, which is also leveraging off the administrator’s appointment. We have the ongoing Fair Work Ombudsman investigations, and there are multiples of those. Then there is also the very real possibility that there are federal and/or state anti-corruption commission investigations, but neither of those agencies is in the habit of making their investigations public until they so choose.

There is such a thing as too many cooks in the kitchen. The opposition is well aware of this. The call for a royal commission in this context is, I fear, frankly theatre. It is mischief, and it is quite possibly something a little more sinister. It is hard not to see that this is basically an opportunity to attack the construction division of the CFMEU, the broader CFMEU, the broader construction industry group of unions and the trade union movement as a whole. Just as outlaw bikie gangs and organised crime will follow the money, as Mr Limbrick quite accurately asserted, so too is the opposition inextricably drawn to its beloved union-busting agenda, like flies to excrement. What is that agenda?

Firstly, and we have heard it directly, it is to bring back the Australian Building and Construction Commission – the so-called tough cop on the beat. Their greatest achievement was to lower productivity. They did have a few weeks of some happiness, and some stats that keep on being bandied around, but overall during the period of the Australian Building and Construction Commission, productivity on construction work sites went down. Workplace deaths and injuries increased on their watch, and they used to stomp around threatening people with jail terms if they did not take down union flags. That was the glorious ABCC. And that was at a cost of tens of millions of dollars to the taxpayer.

Let us not pretend that this problem in the construction sector is new. A lot of this was absolutely happening on the watch of the ABCC, and what did they do about it? They went after Bill Shorten. Jeez, that was good, wasn’t it? The reality is that it is the likes of investigative reporters like Nick McKenzie and the other great journos who have worked in this area – not the ABCC and their army of so-called ‘investigators’ – that have brought this stuff into the light. Let us put that in some perspective. But you still long for the glory days when this army could be deployed under the banner of the ABCC to try and smash unions in the construction sector.

Secondly, in terms of the grand plan, there is clearly an intent to deregister unions – to kneecap their ability to organise and protect workers – and that is an action that is so dumb that it is up there with the Kennett government’s decision to hand over their industrial relations powers to save some money. We still have these Liberal wet dreams about reregulating industrial relations as though it has not already gone. You have already given it away, and it is not coming back. I hope you did save some money, because it is something you have lost absolutely now. That was just an extraordinary decision. If you deregister a union, all you do is convert it into an incorporated association, which is far less regulated and far less required to report and be transparent. Isn’t that just a remarkable achievement?

Thirdly, let us face it, at the end of the day there is still this dream of a golden age which was the WorkChoices IR law. That is where you want to go back to: to attack wages, to attack conditions and to attack the safety of all workers. That is what sits behind this sort of resolution, so we do not support this motion for a royal commission.

Let us just ponder for a second the history of royal commissions that have been deployed by conservative governments to attack the union movement. I think perhaps the most marvellous example would be the ship painters and dockers inquiry, where clearly there was a desire to smash the waterfront unions. What did we end up with? We ended up with bottom of the harbour. That was a really good inquiry, and in some ways it lends veracity to Mr Limbrick’s big picture that is, can I suggest respectfully, far, far, far bigger than anything that the opposition are talking about in their motion. But that is where it went. In terms of the actual waterfront unions, bugger-all – pardon my French – happened.

I want to try and end on a positive note. We have already discussed these crimes and the fact that these crimes should be dealt with by the people who are qualified to do that, and that is the police through an investigation. We also know that there are now a whole lot of agencies who are all having a particular role to play in this process. We have already discussed the huge, huge amount of change that is underway in the construction industry, but ultimately major cultural change is only possible in an industry – (Time expired)

[Council divided on motion]

[Motion defeated 15 -22]