A Sunshine Coast MP has blasted the Federal Government’s move to abolish the Australian Building and Construction Commission.
Federal Member for Fisher Andrew Wallace fears the economic impact the decision will have and said the construction industry would be thrown into chaos at a time of labour shortages and enormous demands.
“Without a tough cop on the beat, Labor will once again open the door to chaos, lawlessness and abuse of power,” he said via a media release.
“We’ll go back to the bad old days where unions like the CFMEU drive up the price of construction and every Australian will pay for it. That’s money taken out of budgets for schools, roads, hospitals and other critical public infrastructure.
“There was no consultation with industry from Labor. There was no consideration of workers and the small and family businesses that make up the backbone of our economy have been overlooked. No transition, no process, no plan from Labor.”
The building and construction industry is Australia’s fifth largest industry and contributes around 9 per cent in terms of GDP.
It employs 1.15 million Australians and around 400,000 small and family businesses.
In April, Masters Builders Association of Australia commissioned Ernst and Young to undertake an economic analysis to assess the cost impacts from abolishing the ABCC.
The report stated, “output in the construction industry could fall by around $35.4 billion by 2030 as higher construction costs makes fewer projects possible, and capital is reallocated to other economic activities.”
Mr Wallace, who remains a registered builder and was a construction law barrister for 16 years prior to entering Parliament in July 2016, used his maiden speech to call out the “dire” status of the construction industry, which he said was brought on by the Labor Gillard Government’s undoing of the ABCC in 2012.
“The building and construction industry is racked with corruption and self-interest … we must clean up this industry for the sake of our country and the country’s economy,” Mr Wallace said in his first parliamentary speech in 2016.
Alongside his Coalition colleagues, Mr Wallace fought for the ABCC to be re-established in December 2016.
He said the ABCC wads tasked to uphold the law and change behaviour to make the building and construction industry fair, efficient and productive and it has had a 91 per cent success rate in its prosecutions, which has seen around $16 million in penalties and fines. In the 2021-22 financial year, the ABCC assisted subcontractors to recover more than $5.1 million in delayed or unpaid progress claims.
“While we continue to make progress, unions continue to interfere, intimidate and impose unlawful regimes on workplaces across some states in Australia,” Mr Wallace said.
“When I began as a chippy in Victoria, the state’s building and construction sector was marked by the most despicable union thuggery, corruption and workplace violence and I too was exposed to their standover tactics.
“While the economy is faced with the toughest global conditions in almost a century, and Australian families and their businesses battle on, we can’t allow unions like the CFMEU use workers’ funds to lie, bully and intimidate.”
In the Fisher electorate, 9632 people are employed in the construction industry.
The construction share of jobs for the electorate (at 15.2 per cent) represented by Mr Wallace ranked second-highest in the nation.
“I will continue to back small businesses, fight for construction industry workers and hold this Government to account,” Mr Wallace said.
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‘Restoring equal rights’
A press release from the office of the Minister for Workplace Relations, Tony Burke, said the move to abolish the ABCC was to restore equal rights for construction workers.
The release said: “The Government is amending the Code for the Tendering and Performance of Building Work – known as the Building Code – to ensure construction workers have the same rights as other workers.”
“Under this change, the Australian Building and Construction Commission’s (ABCC) powers will be pulled back to the bare legal minimum.
“Some of its powers will go back to the Fair Work Ombudsman and to appropriate health and safety regulators. Its most ridiculous powers will be scrapped altogether.
“The Government went to the election with a promise to abolish the ABCC and we intend to introduce legislation to achieve that by the end of 2022. Today’s announcement is a down payment on that commitment.
“The ABCC is a politicised and discredited organisation established by the previous government to target workers purely for ideological reasons.
“It was set up by the Liberals and Nationals to discredit and dismantle unions and undermine the pay, conditions and job security of ordinary Australian workers.
“The ABCC’s record proves it has been more concerned with pursuing and punishing workers than tackling rampant wage theft and compromised safety standards.”
“Workers and their representatives shouldn’t be harassed by a body that wastes taxpayers’ money on trivial nonsense like what stickers a worker might have on their helmet or whether a union logo might appear in a safety sign.”
