Page 1149 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 6 April 2016
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
that culminated in the need for a Labor government to have an inquiry into the building industry because they were not delivering workplace safety, particularly in the construction industry in the ACT.
It did not just happen one year. It built up, and it was there for a long period of time. I urge members to go back to chapter 2, starting on page 21, and just read the charts and look at the detail. The ACT really does not perform very well over a long period of time from 2003-04 to 2009-10. Oh, and who was in charge for all that time? ACT Labor. Who had the MOU with the unions for most of that time? Oh, that would be ACT Labor.
So don’t come in here and lecture us, saying we are not concerned about workplace safety. We are intensely concerned about workers and their rights. We are intensely concerned about safety in the workplace. Everybody deserves the right, the knowledge, that they will go to work and come home safely. It is you on that side of the house who have politicised this. And when we point out the failings of your MOU, the unions that support you and you support, and your failings in government over this period of time, your only comeback is, “Oh, you are against workers’ rights and you are against unions.” If the unions are not delivering, we will be against them, just as, if employer groups or employers are not delivering, we will take them to task. What this report says is that your MOU does not work.
What is its purpose then? What is the need of giving this information to the unions? Why do you ask the unions for their opinion when it would appear that the unions themselves were not doing what was their number one mandate, workplace safety? If this was going on, if we had disreputable firms working in the ACT in that period, surely, under the MOU, the unions, particularly the CFMEU, would have reported that to government. But, obviously they did not because these firms kept getting contracts and accidents apparently kept happening.
The MOU does not work. It is a farce. It is a sop to the unions. It has provided them with a power they do not deserve, they have no mandate for and they have no reason for, and we have a union boss who has absolutely no understanding of the common decency that is desired in the ACT. (Time expired.)
MR HANSON (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (11.06): Madam Assistant Speaker, I want to speak to the amendment and close. I thank members for their contributions. I would like to particularly thank Mr Smyth and Mr Wall for their contributions. Through both of their speeches they debunked the great myth that is being put forward by this Labor government and by the union movement that this is anything to do with safety. It is not. Categorically it is not. In fact, it has been the reverse under this MOU, as members have pointed out.
Workplace safety has been the worst in the country under this MOU and under this government. It cannot have been about safety, and claiming that is false. It is false. This MOU is about corrupting the process. It is about power, and it is about making money through EBAs and other deals into the union movement that then gets funnelled back into the Labor Party. That is what this is about. It is revolting—revolting—that those opposite and unions would try and claim anything but, when the
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video