Anthony Albanese and his Labor government have lost the people’s trust and support. Labor is tied to the CFMEU because of the union’s massive donations. They are also hiding the largest wage theft in Australia’s history, especially among miners in Central Queensland and the Hunter Valley, who are owed significant back pay. 

Recent actions by Labor, such as the late submission of bills, suggest a cover-up to avoid scrutiny. Unions like the CFMEU have lost their way, evident during the COVID-19 lockdowns when members rebelled against their union’s lack of care. Labor abolished the ABCC despite criminal issues within the unions. Labor’s relationship with the CFMEU is a problem and is driven by donations.

As a former union member, I value true unions like the Miners Federation. Today, many union bosses prioritise personal gain, neglecting their members, as seen with the CFMEU and Mining and Energy Union. Workers are forced into monopolistic unions without choice, but alternatives like Queensland’s Red Union exist.  Protecting union monopolies will further their demise and lower wages. Choice is crucial. 

Look at this: Chandler Macleod Group, part of Recruit Holdings, the world’s largest labour hire company, works with the CFMEU and Mining and Energy Union in Hunter and Central Queensland.  The federal government spends billions on labour hire – and the Fair Work Commission has approved these questionable arrangements. BHP, with union help, forced workers from permanent jobs to lower-paying Tesla labour hire, then to Chandler Macleod with another big pay cut.

We need open scrutiny and an inquiry, not just window dressing. The Bill should go to committee, or at least be heard on Friday.  We want to amend the Bill to enable challenges to the Minister’s regulations.  We are committed to seeing criminal charges laid against union crooks, reinstating the watchdog and pushing for comprehensive industrial relations reform.

Transcript

Trust has been lost. Anthony Albanese and his Labor government have lost the people’s trust, lost the people’s confidence, lost the people’s support. Labor supports the CFMEU because the CFMEU gives it massive donations—millions and millions of cash for election campaigns. Labor is wedded to the CFMEU. Labor is dependent on the CFMEU. 

Labor is hiding the biggest wage theft in Australia’s history. Five years I’ve spent exposing the scam. We have an excellent independent report, Coal miners wage theft, done in February this year. It vindicates what I’ve been pushing for five years. Some miners in Central Queensland and the Hunter Valley are owed $41,000 per annum in wage theft. The Independent Workers Union, a new, fair-dinkum union operating in Central Queensland and the Hunter Valley, has lodged complaints for many miners because the CFMEU and the Mining and Energy Union have not bothered to do so. They won’t go after the back pay of the wage theft. 

I’m aware of a complaint lodged just recently, in the last couple of days, to the Fair Work Ombudsman by the Independent Workers Union, seeking, for one person alone, $211,000 in back pay—$211,000 in wage theft that this Labor government condones and hides. The CFMEU drove the theft of wages from Central Queensland and Hunter miners. The workers’ former protectors in the CFMEU are now their exploiters. They’re hurting workers. I wonder: will Labor’s administrator allocate the CFMEU funds to make good the miners’ wages? For one person it’s $211,000; there are over 5,000 miners losing up to or around $41,000 per year of service. 

Labor MPs are complicit because there has been a protection racket for their mates in the CFMEU. Labor MPs in the Hunter denied and then ignored my claims—my claims put to them in writing. I hand-delivered, to Dan Repacholi’s office here in parliament, my letter to him explaining this. Not a peep! Instead, we got lies from Mr Repacholi in the Hunter, and similar from Joel Fitzgibbon. Minister Watt in the Senate has denigrated, ridiculed and dismissed more than 5,000 miners’ legal improvement entitlements. And I have been proven correct. 

Let’s return to Monday and Minister Gallagher’s word, ‘urgent’. ‘This is urgent,’ she said, as to the administrator for the CFMEU. I add two words: ‘cover up’. It’s a cover-up. Minister Gallagher says Labor’s administrator is ‘urgent’, yet Minister Watt dropped this bill on us late on Monday night. What gives? Do you expect us to believe that it was drafted on Sunday—that they did an all-nighter in the department on Sunday with lots of coffee? Why did Labor drop it on us without giving it to us earlier? Is it to avoid scrutiny? Yes—I can see some senators agreeing. When did the Greens and the teal Senator Pocock get copies? We’ve had instances in the past where they have got copies of new bills two weeks before we have and they’ve been dropped on us at the last minute. 

Then Senator Gallagher sought exemption from the normal bills process. Speaking of exemption, Senator Gallagher said, ‘The Albanese government says it’s a clear path.’ Yet the bill is littered with the word ‘may’. It’s a very unclear bill. It needs the word ‘will’. Secondly, she said, ‘The people of Australia are expecting a clear response.’ With an unclear bill? I echo Senator O’Sullivan’s call for a hearing. Then Senator Gallagher said, ‘We will give you a firm view at the end of the week.’ You will only get a firm view with a hearing. We need a firm view and scrutiny of this legislation. We need ‘may’ to be replaced by ‘will’ quite often. We need an opportunity for bipartisan input. 

I’m a former member of three unions. I know genuine unions are necessary. The genuine union movement has a long and proud history, going back to Wales and the lodge system in the Miners Federation, which I was a proud member and participant of. Yet today so many union bosses have forgot their workers and members. Why? Today workers’ protections are enshrined in law—as they should be—including safety, wages, conditions, security, retirement, health and many other provisions. Now the union bosses erode and steal these for personal gain, as the CFMEU and the Mining and Energy Union have done in Central Queensland and the Hunter. Personal gain and power, that’s what it’s about now, not looking after members. Why? Because they’re an untouchable monopoly. Workers need choice. Workers don’t have choice. They must join the union in their industry. That’s it. There’s no choice. The Red Union in Queensland and around Australia and in New Zealand is giving workers choice. 

Thirdly, the Fair Work Commission and the Fair Work Ombudsman have failed to protect miners and workers. The Fair Work Commission has overseen and approved the theft of wages from casual coalminers in the Hunter Valley. As a boy, I lived in Central Queensland and the Hunter coalfields. My dad was in coalmining. I graduated with a mining engineers degree, an honours degree, and then decided I’d better go and learn something, so I worked at the coalface.  

I came across Bill Chapman, the legendary president of the Northern District Miners Federation. He was a wonderful man. I sided with him in an open-air meeting when I worked at Westfalen’s No. 2 mine when I worked on the night shift there. My dad was complimented, highly, by Bill Chapman at my father’s retirement. My dad and Bill used to argue a lot, but they respected each other, because Bill was genuinely concerned about workers. I knew Mattie Best before he died. I worked with him. I played football with him. He was my football coach in Central Queensland when I played rugby league. He was a genuine union delegate who had respect from workers and management and fellow union bosses. He called out safety issues when they were abused. 

I am proud to support real unions that work in workers’ interests. I worked as a mine manager with the CFMEU union bosses. We developed a landmark award that I instigated, and I instigated many previously undreamt-of provisions because they were to the benefit of the workers and productivity. I worked with the union. 

The rank and file in the CFMEU in Victoria during the COVID mismanagement erupted in a mutiny against vaccine mandates and lockdowns. The members realised their union bosses did not care, and they revolted. Labor then abolished the Australian Building and Construction Commission. Senator Watt said, ‘Australians expected parliament to deal with criminal allegations inside the recalcitrant union promptly.’ How, looking at this vague bill? Where is the trust? It’s been smashed. Labor supports the CFMEU because of donations; Labor is wedded to the CFMEU because it’s dependent on donations.  

Yesterday we heard Senator Pocock, a teal senator, say: ‘We need to be cleaning up the union.’ Has he forgotten that he supported the abolition of the ABCC? The CFMEU has assisted in theft from miners, as I’ve explained. They’re now exploiting miners. The Labor Party has been complicit. Both Joel Fitzgibbon and Dan Repacholi reportedly get campaign donations from the CFMEU. Then we get Labor’s fabrication. 

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Allman-Payne): Minister McAllister? 

Senator McAllister: I wonder if Senator Roberts could be asked to refer to people by their proper titles.  

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Thank you, Senator.  

Senator ROBERTS: Labor fabricated an imaginary loophole, which the miners in Central Queensland and the Hunter Valley told me was a fabrication, and I worked out it is. Then they pretended to close the loophole with their closing loopholes bill. All it needed was enforcement of the Fair Work Act and the Black Coal Mining Industry Award. Minister Watt and Minister Burke, his predecessor, and Mr Fitzgibbon and Mr Repacholi are complicit in this way theft, the largest in Australia. Labor enabled casuals— 

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Senator, please resume your seat. Minister? 

Senator McAllister: Senator Roberts is reflecting very directly on a range of people, including ministers who represent the government in this chamber, and he should withdraw. 

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: It would assist the chamber. You were certainly straying into impugning members of the parliament. 

Senator ROBERTS: To assist the chamber, and for that reason, I will withdraw. But Labor enabled casuals in coalmining. The Black Coal Mining Industry Award prohibited casuals on production; it still does. Labor, under Prime Minister Gillard, changed the coal long service leave provisions legislation to include casuals. I’m told that Anthony Albanese read the bill into parliament early in 2011. That’s what enabled this wage theft. 

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Senator— 

Senator ROBERTS: Sorry—Mr Albanese, the Prime Minister. 

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: This is happening reasonably regularly throughout your contribution. Could you please make sure that you refer to everyone to whom you are referring using their correct titles. 

Senator ROBERTS: Certainly. Labor has forgotten workers. It’s actually helping union bosses—union bosses from the CFMEU—to exploit workers. Minister Watt knows of the wage theft, because he advised us of the Mining and Energy Union’s application for a new enterprise agreement. We advised him the application confirms our work. And yet there has been no Mining and Energy Union application for back pay. Why? Because when they were part of the CFMEU they deliberately conjured up illegal enterprise agreements. We’ve had no word from Minister Watt regarding the investigation into wage theft that the Senate required thanks to my amendment to a bill earlier this year. We do not believe that Minister Watt is fit to oversee the CFMEU administrator. It’s a furphy. 

Look at the other unions, the health and safety unions, stealing from the lowest-paid workers in Australia, and SDA union bosses corrupt. The Fair Work Act covers union bosses’ greed, theft and abuse. Look at Craig Thomson. We’re tired of the cover-ups. 

Let’s get on to the root cause. It was publicly revealed in the Australian Financial Review on 12 April this year. Their journalist David Marin-Guzman wrote an article headlined ‘CFMEU push to take control of the Labor Party’. I quote: 

John Setka is planning to use the militant construction union’s hundreds of delegates and members to boost the CFMEU’s influence on internal Labor politics in the Victorian and federal parliaments. 

Another quote: 

Such a large membership drive could give the CFMEU significant control over Labor preselections and party conferences, which elect the party executive and vote on policy— 

even the Premier in Victoria. That’s what’s going on here; it’s a power play. 

Then we see Labor Premier Steven Miles in Queensland accused of silencing the Crime and Corruption Commission. Mark Le Grand, who spent 10 years as chief investigator at the then Criminal Justice Commission in the wake of the 1989 Fitzgerald inquiry, told the Australian there would have been no point in having the royal commission if Fitzgerald could not report on its investigation. Labor want to shut down the reporting. I could go on with more quotes. 

We then have Robert Gottliebsen telling us of the dire predicament of Australia’s productivity decline. Falling productivity—yeah, that’s the key to wage rises! The CFMEU is guilty of destroying productivity. When productivity falls it kills industry, kills the future and kills jobs. Add that to the energy prices, the industrial relations policies, the inflation, the productivity decline. It’s killing the economy, killing national security and killing the standard of living. 

This is about more than just the CFMEU administrator; this is about trust. We see in Queensland that the Labor Party and the union movement are not two separate entities; they are one entity. Minister Grace Grace, when she lost her seat and Campbell Newman took over a decade ago, went straight into a job at $180,000 a year at the Queensland Teachers Union. Then, when Labor got back into power, she slid straight back into working directly with the Labor Party. The whole time she worked with the Labor Party. We’ve seen the Labor government in Queensland outlaw the Red Union because it’s competition for the Queensland Teachers Union and the Queensland nurses union. There’s a monopoly in industrial relations and no accountability. Then we have provisions. I draw people’s attention to provisions such as to 323B in the new act, clause 1, clause 2, which I do not have time to go into at the moment. These are things we are focusing on. Section 323C clause 2, section 323D clause 1—so loose, so vague, so open. We need accountability. We need competition amongst unions with better service to members. We need higher sustained wages now and into the future, because an industry that is healthy will pay higher wages. That is a proven fact. 

Protecting union monopolies will continue union demise and lead to lower wages. Choice is essential. Look at the players in this: Chandler McLeod Group, part of Recruit Holdings, the world’s largest labour hire company working with the CFMEU and the Mining and Energy Union in the Hunter and Central Queensland. Federal government itself uses billions of dollars of labour hire. The Fair Work Commission has approved these awards. BHP forced people to change from being BHP people with permanent employment to Tesla labour hire with a big pay cut, thanks to the union, and then forced to go to Chandler Macleod with another big pay cut. 

We need open scrutiny, we need a hearing, not window-dressing. It needs to be sent to committee, or at least get a hearing on Friday. We are thinking of an amendment requesting the administrator investigate coalmining wage theft as per one union report and organise for the CFMEU finances to cover that—but it is not part of the bill, so we won’t be doing that. We want to amend the bill to allow disallowance of the minister’s regulations. We want to see criminal charges. We want to see the watchdog brought back and comprehensive reform to industrial relations.