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senate vote 2019-11-28#1
Edited by
mackay staff
on
2020-05-08 12:22:27
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Title
Business — Rearrangement- Business - Rearrangement - Let a vote happen
Description
<p class="speaker">Mathias Cormann</p><p>I seek leave to move a motion to provide for the consideration of the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill 2019.</p><p>Leave is not granted.</p>- The majority voted in favour of a [motion](https://www.openaustralia.org.au/senate/?id=2019-11-28.4.2) to suspend the usual procedural rules - known as [standing orders](https://peo.gov.au/understand-our-parliament/how-parliament-works/parliament-at-work/standing-orders/) - so that a vote can take place.
- ### Motion text
- > *That so much of the standing orders be suspended as would prevent him moving a motion to provide for the consideration of a matter, namely a motion to provide that a motion relating to the consideration of the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill 2019 may be moved immediately and determined without amendment or debate.*
<p>Pursuant to contingent notice of motion, I move:</p><p class="italic">That so much of the standing orders be suspended as would prevent him moving a motion to provide for the consideration of a matter, namely a motion to provide that a motion relating to the consideration of the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill 2019 may be moved immediately and determined without amendment or debate.</p><p>It is critically important that the government's ensuring integrity bill is passed by the Senate this week. We've now had about 10 hours worth of second reading debate. Every single Labor senator has had the opportunity to speak and express their views. This bill has been on the <i>Notice Paper </i>for some time. It was first introduced in July. There has been a very significant Senate inquiry with lots of submissions, lots of scrutiny and lots of opportunities for people to express their views, and today the government is proposing to make available to the Senate another five hours of committee debate. If we get cracking very swiftly, we can get into the meat of dealing with the amendments and dealing with the legislation in detail.</p><p>Let us remind ourselves why this legislation is so important. Court imposed fines of millions and millions of dollars for the most militant of unions around Australia clearly have not had any impact, and it's very important for our economy and for jobs that we can maintain the rule of law, in particular on construction sites across Australia. Clearly, some of the most militant unions across Australia consider court imposed fines nothing more than a cost of doing business. They factor it into their business model. But it's the taxpayer who ultimately pays the price for this ongoing lawlessness which the Master Builders Association has estimated adds up to 30 per cent to the cost of construction projects. That is money that clearly could be, and should be, used to build roads, schools and hospitals. It should not be used to pay for inflated costs of construction projects on the back of consistent and persistent lawless behaviour in the fines of court imposed orders.</p><p>Our bill provides a fair and transparent framework which sets out when organisations and their officers can be referred to a court for an order seeking disqualification or deregistration. It is a court that will make the decision. So this proposition that somehow there is something untoward here is completely false. And, despite some of the more hysterical claims that have been made, this bill does nothing to prevent organisations which respect the law from continuing to work in their members' interests. In fact, we support them to continue to work in their members' interests.</p><p>The amendments circulated late last week and agreed upon with Centre Alliance and One Nation are sensible, and of course we will be supporting them during the committee stage. These amendments include: making the independent regulator, the Registered Organisations Commission, the only body with power to refer organisations and officers to a court for deregistration or disqualification; a demerit points system effectively giving officials three strikes before they can be referred to the courts for disqualification; removing overseas convictions as a trigger for officials to be banned; making it clear that courts have complete discretion in making decisions and that they must take into account the gravity of matters when considering an order for disqualification or deregistration; and, indeed, a new public-interest-test trigger for amalgamations based on the compliance history of those organisations.</p><p>We are very grateful for the constructive engagement by the crossbench, and we look forward to the Senate considering this legislation in detail. In order to ensure that we can get on with it as fast as we can, I will leave my available additional minutes for the Senate.</p> <p class="speaker">Penny Wong</p><p>What do we have today? We have a government with no integrity—a government whose integrity is in tatters—coming into this chamber and demanding that the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill 2019 be passed in the name of ensuring integrity. This bill is actually about undermining the capacity of working people to organise. A government that has no integrity wants to push it through. We have a government in which a minister has doctored documents—</p> <p class="speaker">Mathias Cormann</p><p>Mr President, I have a point of order. Senator Wong is making an imputation against a member of the other place, and she should withdraw. Obviously, these sorts of imputations are inconsistent with the standing orders.</p> <p class="speaker">Penny Wong</p><p>On the point of order, Mr President: I'm happy for us to look at the <i>Hansard</i>, but I think Mr Taylor himself has recognised that the documents were doctored. He has said that himself, has he not?</p> <p class="speaker">Mathias Cormann</p><p>Mr President, on the point of order: I raised the point of order because Senator Wong specifically alleged and made the imputation that it was Minister Taylor who doctored the documents. That is an imputation that is inaccurate and it is inconsistent with the standing orders.</p> <p class="speaker">Scott Ryan</p><p>Thank you. I invite Senator Wong to withdraw and rephrase.</p> <p class="speaker">Penny Wong</p><p>I will withdraw and rephrase. He has used doctored documents. Thank you for demonstrating precisely what I'm saying, Senator Cormann. He jumped to his feet to defend a minister of the Crown who is under criminal investigation—and who is refusing to stand aside—for using doctored documents on ministerial correspondence. He has the gall to stand here and tell the Senate that this is about integrity. He was defending the Prime Minister, who has had to correct the record in the House. That's what he had to do. The Prime Minister rang his mate to check out what's happening in a criminal investigation. And you come in here and ask the crossbench of the Senate to ram through legislation that you say is about ensuring integrity!</p><p>Senator Cormann says that this bill is critically important. Do you know what's critically important? That you find some integrity over there. That's what Australians would like. Do you know what's critically important? That the Prime Minister actually finds some integrity, because, I tell you what, there hasn't been much on display. I'm unsurprised that they're pretty quiet, because they're defending a cabinet minister who has used doctored documents on ministerial correspondence, who is under criminal investigation and who's refusing to stand aside. The Prime Minister rang up his mate to check on a criminal investigation. And you want to come in here and talk about integrity—seriously!</p><p>This bill is not about integrity. This bill is an attack on working people and their representatives. It is the same ideological agenda that I saw 14 years ago when I stood here as the shadow employment minister. Senator Abetz was over there. You got through Work Choices and you were all rejoicing. But do you know what? It showed the Australian people what you are really like. You are obsessed with smashing trade unions and you are obsessed with reducing the power of working people to organise and debate. That is in the Liberal Party's DNA, and that is what this bill is all about. So the government is now demanding that the Senate rush through this anti-worker legislation. This is the party that implemented Work Choices, voted against—</p><p class="italic">Senator Rennick interjecting—</p><p>Oh, tell us what you think! Why don't you stand up, Senator Rennick? You're always very tough on the back bench. Why don't you stand up and tell us what you really think about working people and trade unions? Come on: you stand up next in the debate and have the guts to actually put something on the record.</p> <p class="speaker">Scott Ryan</p><p>Order, Senator Wong. Please address your comments through the chair.</p> <p class="speaker">Penny Wong</p><p>I'm taking the interjection. This is a government that says, 'We're for working people, but we're going to vote against penalty rates; we're going to vote to refuse to restore penalty rates'—for people who depend on penalty rates to pay their bills and put food on the table. It's an utter disgrace. You voted against the restoration of penalty rates.</p><p class="italic">Senator Payne interjecting—</p><p>You may never have had to struggle, Senator Payne, but people who are relying on penalty rates do, and the fact that you walked away from them says something about you. You're pushing this bill through with your own integrity in tatters: a minister under investigation by police, a special strike force for a criminal offence, a PM who is interfering in that police investigation and a Prime Minister who is loose with the truth and who shows nothing but contempt for parliament and the principles of ministerial integrity and accountability, and you can't even bring yourselves to say in the parliament that the member for Chisholm is a fit and proper person. You can't even say that.</p><p>There has never been a government with less integrity than you lot. You are all about one standard for yourselves and your mates and another for Australian workers. Well, we on this side will not stand for it. We on this side will do what we did with Work Choices. We will fight this legislation in here and we will fight it between now and the next election and we will expose your hypocrisy and your anti-worker bias, which has always been the Liberal DNA.</p> <p class="speaker">Marise Payne</p><p>I didn't expect anything better from those opposite, and I wasn't disappointed. The Leader of the Government in the Senate has moved a resolution this morning to bring on the debate on this bill. We have had 34 speakers, which has taken just over 11 hours of time—as it should for a bill that is a very important bill for this chamber to discuss. The bill was introduced into the parliament in July. It's been the subject of multiple inquiries, and it has been the subject of intensive and extensive debate in this chamber. Interestingly: what does it mean those opposite are afraid of? Are they afraid of recognising the fact that registered organisations in this country, both employer associations and unions, have a privileged position in the Australian industrial relations system and in the economy more broadly and should be accountable? Is that what they're afraid of? Are they afraid of making accountable people who breach the trust they hold in leading registered organisations, breach the trust of their members? Is that what they're afraid of? Are they afraid of those who exercise their own interests at the expense of their members' interests being held to account? You could be forgiven for thinking that.</p><p>As the Attorney-General pointed out in the House of Representatives yesterday, in the beginning of the second reading debate on this bill, there were 15 speeches by Labor senators. Apparently it amounted to 37,000 words, and I feel slightly sorry for the person who had to count that. In those 37,000 words, the attributes of the principal registered organisation that concerns part of this bill, the CFMMEU, was mentioned—how many times? How many times do you think it was mentioned? It was mentioned only once, and it wasn't acknowledged at all—no errors, no mistakes, no excesses acknowledged at all. They are living in oblivion. They are completely oblivious to the impact these organisations have on workers, they're oblivious to the impact these organisations have on the economy and they are asserting that this is a process of endeavouring to rush through a bill. Nothing could be further from the truth—34 speakers, and over 11 hours of debate.</p><p>So, after multiple inquiries, after months of the bill being on the table, the government seeks to bring the bill on, because we have seen egregious, persistent and consistent ignoring of the requirements of basic lawful behaviour in this country. And Australia is a rule-of-law country. We absolutely have the reasonable expectation that registered organisations will behave according to the law and will comply with the law, but in mountains of examples they do not. So, this bill is absolutely required to have been reintroduced. It is required in order to restore integrity. It is required in order to provide that, where an organisation, a division, a branch or an officer is doing the wrong thing, something can be done to stop the misconduct and to assure members that organisations are acting with integrity and that they are acting in the interests of members and not in the interests of their leaders. We know that the existing laws have proven to be lacking, including observation of those laws, in addressing the widespread culture of misconduct in some registered organisations. We went through some of that last night, and I am sure we will discuss it at length today.</p><p>Our intention to is to ensure that registered organisations are representative of and accountable to their members. We want to encourage the efficient management of organisations, with high standards of accountability providing for the democratic control of organisations. They are basic principles of competent administration and they are completely rejected by those opposite, which speaks volumes for the way they would approach government. We have seen that in the past, as well.</p><p>This bill is absolutely consistent with the purpose of the act under which it sits because its provisions are directed at ensuring that all organisations act with integrity and act in the best interests of their members. I would have thought that would be in the nation's interest, I would have thought it would have been in the interests of the registered organisations, and I would have thought it would have been in the interests of the Senate to continue the discussion of this bill today.</p> <p class='motion-notice motion-notice-truncated'>Long debate text truncated.</p>
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