Subjects: Anthony Albanese’s plan to abolish the building and construction industry regulator; Jacinta Price’s maiden speech; the QLD Government’s waste of taxpayer dollars on quarantine facility.
RAY HADLEY
The Federal Opposition Leader, Peter Dutton, is online. Peter, g’day.
PETER DUTTON
Good morning, Ray.
RAY HADLEY
What happened to all the niceties that we were going to hear about yesterday?
PETER DUTTON
Well, the Government certainly had said, you know, it was going to be a different parliament and they’d be kinder and gentler and, you know, they’d be much better people. But, I said to Tony Burke at the end of it, “mate, what was the difference between that Question Time and the other ones that we’ve been in for a long time?” So, I think it’s a bit of rhetoric and a bit of carry on, and a bit of reality. I mean, the Prime Minister flew off the handle at Sussan Ley yesterday, which I thought was really over the top and unwarranted, but, he does, you know, he’s got a temper, that’s for sure, unfortunately and there’s lots that we agree on and lots that we can disagree on. But I thought it was a bit over the top yesterday.
RAY HADLEY
Look, you concentrated on the Building Commission, the ABCC. It’s been a bit of a plaything of the various parties since John Howard introduced in 2002 and then the Labor Party got rid of it, your party got it back, now they’re getting rid of it. But I just wanted to play to our audience some audio from your colleague Michaelia Cash with my colleague Michael McLaren. I want people to listen to what she had to say:
[excerpt]
MICHAELIA CASH That’s exactly right. So, they have successfully brought 91 per cent of the cases. The courts in Australia, not the ABCC, the courts in Australia who heard those cases have said based on the evidence the ABCC has presented to them, they have upheld the prosecution. So, by labelling the ABCC as they have, a politicised body, you know, is Anthony Albanese questioning the independence of our judiciary? Does he believe that it’s the courts, were the courts wrong when they found that the CFMMEU were in breach of industrial laws on the dozens and dozens of occasions that the ABCC brought action against the union, but more than that, if you recall in the Pattinson decision earlier this year, the High Court found that the CFMMEU and I quote was “a serial offender”, who “engage in whatever action and make whatever threats it wishes without regard to the law”, that “contravened [laws]…on approximately 150 occasions”, that they were “well-resourced, having more than sufficient means to pay any penalty that the court might have been disposed to impose” on them. In other words, it’s just the cost of doing business. And this is who Anthony Albanese is prepared to back over the Australian economy, the Australian construction industry , the 1.1 million Australian workers in the industry and ultimately the Australian taxpayer – they’re going to end up paying for this.
RAY HADLEY
So, she had a fair bit more to say with Michael McLaren early in the week and she spoke about the amount of money that flowed from the CFMMEU to the Labor Party and now they’re being compensated for their generosity, so to speak.
PETER DUTTON
Well, Ray, I just think this is a much bigger issue than people probably first realise. A lot of your listeners will remember the BLF and Norm Gallagher and the days of all of that thuggery and corruption and the way in which they carried on on those building sites. The trouble is that the watchdog was designed to police construction worksites so this illegal behaviour couldn’t take place. Because what happens is they stop concrete pours, they picket out the front, they swear and threaten, you know, the life of workers if they go onto that building site and it drives up the cost of buildings, of houses, of aged care facilities. It means that you get less road built for your dollar that you’re prepared to spend, it means it’s more expensive to build schools and hospitals, and you’re talking about in the billions and billions of dollars. Unfortunately, the links between the outlaw motorcycle gang members and the CFMEU. The CFMEU uses the bikies as their muscle on job sites and they are really, I think, you know, put themselves in a bad position because the CFMEU has made a $5 million donation over the course of the last three years to the Australian Labor Party. And of course, now one of the first acts before they’ve dealt with, you know, the problems around gas prices or electricity or other really important cost of living pressures that people are feeling at the moment – they’ve announced and introduced this arrangement where they will abolish the building construction watchdog and allow the CFMEU off the leash.
So the CFMEU will be laughing and rubbing their hands together because they’ve obviously made this donation. They’ve really influenced the Australian Labor Party and the first act of the ALP Government under Mr Albanese when they’ve got into government, has been to abolish the ABCC or to defund it, as they say they’ll also do, and you’ll see this lawless activity spike. Already on building sites, you’re seeing the CFMEU really flexing their muscle and the abuse of females on building sites, the thuggery, the charges in their thousands and the fines in their millions by courts, as Michaelia pointed out, is quite phenomenal. So, I don’t think the Prime Minister can just let this go through to the keeper and pretend it’s not going to have any impact on the economy, on jobs, on the cost of construction and the rule of law needs to be enforced on building sites as it is anywhere else. That’s all we’re asking for and therefore keep the independent construction watchdog in place.
RAY HADLEY
Tony Burke simply said, if we don’t get this through legislation because there’s a hostile Senate, they don’t vote with us, we’ll do it by regulation and basically keep paying the Commissioner, but they won’t, it’ll be a toothless tiger, they’ll be unable to act in any capacity.
PETER DUTTON
That’s exactly right, and I think the problem at the moment, of course, Ray, is that, you know, the economy’s going to come under a lot of pressure. We’re seeing the effect of interest rates and inflation, and the trouble is that Labor is making a bad situation worse. They’ve got the realities of an international economy, but they’re making these sort of decisions, and even Ernst and Young, when they had a look at the impact of the abolition or the de-funding, as you say, of the construction watchdog, the cost to the economy would be about 4000 jobs. It’d be a $48 billion hit on our economy, and it feeds into higher inflation because you’ve got higher building costs. So, at a time when families are really feeling the pressure at the checkout and at the bowser, you’ve got a government here that’s making a bad situation much worse. It just goes to show that, you know, I mean, Labor can’t manage money or the economy and they’re always answerable to their union bosses, and in this case, as you’re seeing in other industries around the country at the moment, unions are preparing to go on strike and businesses just can’t afford that at the moment.
RAY HADLEY
Just one final thing on that, I reported via The Australian this week, working days lost in 2011-2012 were 24,000 – then that was under the ABCC and then under the Gillard Government abolishing the ABCC, we had 89,000 – almost four times as many days lost in 2012-2013. So, I mean, you can’t argue with the stats. You don’t have an ABCC, and you lose three, four times the amount of working days because of industrial action and the illegalities that go with it, thanks to the CFMMEU.
PETER DUTTON
That’s exactly right, Ray, and, I mean, who pays for this? Well, the builder doesn’t wear the cost, he or she can’t afford to do that. If you’ve got the concrete pour that stopped, or you’ve got all of these days where the CFMEU is going on strike on your building site, the cost gets passed through to the consumer. So, people who are buying houses, buying units in a complex or as I say, going into an aged care facility, they’re paying, you know, tens of thousands of dollars more for that house or for that unit. That’s why I say they’re really beholden and they’re blind to the reality of what the CFMEU gets up to. No other union carries on like this, no other workforce frankly carries on like this, not teachers, not people in the, you know, in the Shoppies Union, nobody in the Police Union, nobody in the unions otherwise that represent workers across the country. This is a lawless union and they’ve been fined tens of millions of dollars. They snub their noses at the courts and the Labor Party’s got a cosy relationship with them. They donate millions of dollars to the Labor Party and I just think one of the first acts of the Labor Party, frankly, should be to support workers and support people who are really struggling to pay their bills at the moment and will over the course of the next couple of years – and their first act is to make it harder for people.
RAY HADLEY
Now, I thought there were some fairly impressive performances this week from first timers, but I thought the leader of the pack was Jacinta Price – 30 minutes of an outstanding speech in the Senate overnight. She’s calling out the Northern Territory Government, where she is of course representing the Northern Territory, for this ridiculous decision to open the floodgates on grog again and even people from the Labor Party, Marion Scrymgour said the removal of alcohol bans was like pulling forces out of Afghanistan without an escape plan.
PETER DUTTON
Look Ray, I’ve been in Parliament 20 years and I’ve heard presidents and prime ministers give wonderful speech, but I think that was the most powerful speech I’d heard in this parliament. Jacinta Price is just a rock star and she speaks common sense, she stands up for her beliefs, she’s belittled by many within the left-wing media and attacked by some within the Indigenous community. But she’s a proud Indigenous woman that stands up for common sense. She doesn’t want to see the sexual abuse and the domestic violence that takes place on a too-regular basis. She wants practical outcomes. If you haven’t seen the speech, I’ll tell you what, search it up on YouTube or have a look on her website because it was a cracker of a speech. It called out a lot of the nonsense and the platitudes that people are, you know, the committees that are being formed and the talk and as you point out, the violence rates will increase because of the grog bans being lifted. You know, we’ve been critical of the Prime Minister again on one of their first acts, for withdrawing the Cashless Debit Card. This is a card that’s gone into communities so that families can spend money on their kids, on food, on education, on the necessities as opposed to alcohol and drugs, and the Labor Party’s abolished that. So, that, in addition to the lifting of the grog bans in some of these communities, it is going to result in much worse outcomes and, you know, as I say, we want to support the Government where they’re making good decisions and good policy, but in this case it’s going to result in much poorer outcomes and, you know, they should be held to account for it.
RAY HADLEY
Just one final thing. I spoke to the Opposition Leader in Queensland, David Crisafulli in the first hour about this Wellcamp fiasco. Your home state. An average of 1.26 million a day on Wellcamp for 177 days. Shortly they close it down, they warehouse it, then it comes back to the Wagner family and they play no role in this, they are a commercial entity doing the best they can for their company, but $230 million and above it has cost for something that didn’t need to be built because you had Pinkenba ready to open anyway?
PETER DUTTON
Well Ray, I mean, you wonder why, you know, I think people were sort of a bit bemused about why Annastacia Palaszczuk just wouldn’t declare this figure. She came to Canberra yesterday for a party last night here in Canberra and obviously she wanted to be out of Brisbane as quickly as she could because this figure was disclosed and I just think it’s blown the minds of a lot of people. There are a lot of people in our community that need help at the moment and you’ve got a government spending – what did David Crisafulli say – the average is about $320,000 per person that went in there and I think the Labor Party’s got a lot to answer for. There are all sorts of question marks around this Government now and I think this just adds to it and it’s passing strange that the Premier doesn’t front up to answer questions, she rolls out Dr Miles or Professor Miles, or whatever he is now. And you know, she refuses to answer the questions.
RAY HADLEY
He’s a doctor of unionism, as you know.
PETER DUTTON
Doctor of unionism, and a professor of nothing, so, you should get him on sometime…
RAY HADLEY
No, no, he’s been in witness protection for quite a number of weeks. He’s been hidden away from view and then Annastasia went to Canberra to wish Milton Dick all the best with Cameron and he was left holding the bag and Giggles handled it, ummed and ahhed his way through a number of media conferences before. He’s certainly not a professor of the English language. I don’t profess to be a master of English either, but by crikey I’d play him off a break most days of the week!
PETER DUTTON
Well, I’m pretty sure you’d be able to put a bit of a package together on him at some point.
RAY HADLEY
I’ll do my best. Thanks very much.
PETER DUTTON
Let the boys go at it. Alright. Thanks, mate.
RAY HADLEY
The Robertson brothers will be onto that.
That’s Peter Dutton, the Federal Opposition Leader.
[ends]