Page 2447 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 31 July 2018
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suggested they will feel an immediate impact of this legislation when it is enacted from January.
Let me read from a letter I received from one such business:
Whilst we do agree that Work Health and Safety should be reviewed regularly so we can identify ways we can improve ourselves and the construction industries safety, we do not agree with the proposed changes to consult unions for the formation of a workgroup is the way to improve safety. We believe that consultation of unions will be counterproductive to a worksite and by doing this safety will not improve.
As I have said, this bill does nothing more than allow the trade unions, and by that I mean as many unions as see fit, greater access to workers and worksites. It allows unions to sidestep existing right of entry provisions, particularly those enshrined in commonwealth law.
The HIA have said with regard to this bill:
… by enshrining a union presence into projects that may or may not have current union members onsite, fails to recognise the many other pathways for compliance with safety legislation that respects the rights of employees, contractors and builders to operate in a non unionised environment.
This bill manifestly illustrates just how beholden this Labor-Greens government is to the union movement. We only have to see just how far the unions will go to assert their influence. Just last week the minister for industrial relations was attacked by a number of unions, accusing her of not moving fast enough on the workplace reform agenda.
Therefore, it is little surprise that within a week this bill has been brought back for debate and that this week we will see the introduction of further legislation granting even more power and influence to the union movement in the ACT. I guess the hard lesson that the minister’s predecessor, Mr Corbell, learned in the lead-up to preselection for the 2016 election serves as a strong reminder that the union support that members opposite and those on the crossbench enjoy comes at great expense to the ACT community.
What we have before us today is the first of it, the beginning of the end for fairness: fairness in workplaces, fairness for employees and employers alike, and fairness in government procurement processes—because that has indeed clearly been articulated as the next port of call. Government procurement will have further union influence enshrined in law in the not too distant future. The secret deals that have been done between unions and the ACT government, the deals that have seen unions having the power to veto contractors bidding for ACT government work, will be law before too long.
We are following the lead of the Victorian Labor government, with their militant union infiltration of all government projects. It is happening in Queensland, where we have known that union thugs are in charge of their building and construction industry
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