MINISTER TONY BURKE - TRANSCRIPT - PRESS CONFERENCE, PARLIAMENT HOUSE - WEDNESDAY, 17 JULY 2024

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

PRESS CONFERENCE

PARLIAMENT HOUSE, CANBERRA

WEDNESDAY, 17 JULY 2024

SUBJECTS: Taking action to clean up the construction industry, CFMEU.

TONY BURKE MP, MINISTER FOR EMPLOYMENT AND WORKPLACE RELATIONS, MINISTER FOR THE ARTS: G’day everyone, thanks for coming in. There’s been a fair bit of speculation, so you know why I’m here today. Earlier today the General Manager of the Fair Work Commission Murray Furlong put out a statement which made a number of comments in terms of the role of the Commission. And as General Manager of the Fair Work Commission he is the regulator of the Registered Organisations Act, which is the Act that governs the proper management of registered organisations, obviously including trade unions. You’ve all got the statement, there’s no need for me to read through it all. He referred specifically to the fact that he is seeking advice on making an application to the Federal Court under Section 323 of the Registered Organisations Act. That section refers specifically to the powers to appoint an administrator to take over the running of a registered organisation.

The number one job of any union is to look after its members. That's a job of the union and it's a job of the officials. The reported behaviour from the construction division of the CFMEU is the exact opposite of that obligation. It's abhorrent, it's intolerable. I said over the weekend that we would take action to address these issues and we are. I said that I would weigh up three things. I would look at the evidence as it continued to appear. I said that I would look at whatever response there had been from the union. And I would look at the advice that I received from my department. The General Manager of the Fair Work Commission is the best person placed to take this action. The action does have a series of complexities under the Fair Work Act, a series of various conditions that the General Manager is currently taking advice on. I want to make the following clear: any action that the General Manager takes with respect to any part of the construction division of the CFMEU, I, as Minister, will intervene in support of that action.

I do believe these actions are best taken by the regulator, but any action to appoint an administrator will be supported by me as Minister. If any of those actions taken by the General Manager are opposed, then it needs to be understood and opposed on the basis of some of the legal complexity of appointing an administrator. Then the Government will introduce legislation when Parliament returns to remove any barriers to appointing administrators to whatever sections of the construction division of the CFMEU where the General Manager believes it's appropriate. So, I want to make sure, while the General Manager is considering, where it will be in the public interest to appoint administrators on that immediate application there will be the support of the Government. If it is opposed and there are barriers and this is not resolved by the time Parliament returns, then those barriers will be removed by Government legislation.

The Government will ensure that the regulator has all the powers it needs to appoint administrators. There can be no place for criminality or corruption in any part of the construction industry.

In addition to this, there is other action that the Government is taking. I have requested the Fair Work Ombudsman undertake a targeted review of all enterprise agreements made by the Victorian branch of the construction division of the CFMEU that apply to Victorian “Big Build” projects. I stress on this, we're seeking information on coercive behaviour. The Government has no intention of taking any action which would put at risk the terms and conditions of employment of the workers who are covered by those agreements. This is not their fault.

The Government will also use its procurement powers to ensure that enterprise agreements used on Government funded projects are genuinely agreed and that workplaces are free from coercion and intimidation.

I've also written to the AFP Commissioner, requesting that the AFP investigate the recent allegations and work cooperatively with state police to investigate and prosecute any criminal breaches.

Before I go to questions, I'll refer to one objection. This may take someone's question away, although that’s never worked in the past. Some people have wanted to compare why an administrator and why not deregistration? When Bob Hawke took the action of deregistration, that was the toughest action you could take to clean up an organisation.

The way industrial relations works under the Fair Work Act means that the toughest action that can be taken is to appoint an administrator. And the reason for this is simple. It goes back to a change that was made through WorkChoices, which is still part of the legislation - which is the capacity for those who are not registered organisations to still act as bargaining agents. That capacity was not around when the BLF was deregistered. That meant if you deregistered them, they could no longer operate. Because you don't have to be a registered organisation to be a bargaining agent, if we simply went down the deregistration path, we would have an organisation still capable of bargaining and doing the entire business model that we've been seeing reported over recent days - with no layer of regulation or additional oversight that applies to registered organisations. It would be a gift to the worst elements, and I have no intention of going down that path. I'll go here and then here, and then here across the front row, then I'll do row two.

REPORTER: Thank you, Minister. Today our papers had footage of a union official at the CFMEU taking a wad of cash in what looked like a kickback. Are you surprised that that's been going on, or did you always suspect that was going on within the CFMEU? And related to that, are the changes that we're hearing about today going to ensure that union officials, such as that individual, are actually driven out of the union?

BURKE: There are aspects of that story that, as you know, have been public, have been public prior to it being published today. The images themselves I haven't seen before, but they may well have been public before. I just, I hadn't looked at the images previous to today. The area that I will say has been the most serious shift that I've seen is, up until now, there have been many conversations which have been about thuggery and about dealing with the culture of thuggery. The significant change that I've seen over recent days is a conversation about the infiltration of organised crime. That is a different layer altogether. In terms of the part of the question that goes to getting rid of individuals, that's exactly what administrators are put in there to do. Administrators have the capacity to look directly at who is employed and to make sure that they are moved on, to look at who delegates are and to make sure that they are moved on. I acknowledge there has been some progress in the last couple of days from the union. There has been some progress in terms of some of their powers. But as the regulator has looked at this, the view of the regulator is very much one that is favouring this concept of intervening under Section 323 of the Act. And I want to make sure we do everything we can as a government to facilitate that.

REPORTER: But just on the mechanics putting it into administration, could you just explain, would it be nationwide, across all divisions? And would it be an external, like a judicial officer, who would control the administration? And how long do you envisage the union would have to be under administration for? Is that an open question or isn’t it?

BURKE: What I'm wanting to do is to make sure that this is a process led by the regulator and not a political process. I want to make sure that the regulator has no barriers in dealing with any part of the construction division, not limited to Victoria. Not limited to Victoria. I want them to be able to have the full powers to be able to act in the public interest. I should add an administrator, as well as having the capacity to terminate people, either as employees or delegates in different roles, they also would usually have the capacity as well, to look specifically at funding decisions that are made because some of what has been reported in recent times goes particularly to flows of cash, where you would want the administrator to be able to deal with that as well.

REPORTER: Zach Smith went on RN yesterday. He refused to condemn John Setka, basically praised all of his legacy. Was it his comments that galvanised your response here today in terms of viewing the CFMEU as not being able to clean up its own house? And just more broadly, do you accept the union movement has been unaware of many of these serious allegations, or has there been a bit of willful blindness going on?

BURKE: First of all, these decisions are not based on a radio interview, they're based on the mounting evidence. And as I said previously, we have dealt with thuggery, dealing with organised crime is a different order altogether. A different order altogether. We've taken action on thuggery, and the Prime Minister took very early action with respect to John Setka and the Labor Party. But as there has been an escalation in the evidence, there has been an escalation in the Government's response. I accept everything that Sally McManus said in the interview that I saw yesterday. I know there has been some commentary of, oh, but everybody must have known. Can I just say and ask journalists to take journalists at their word. This has been published as news. A lot of it has been published as exclusive. There is no doubt that new information has emerged in recent days and over the last week. The work of Nick McKenzie in particular, but the whole team around that has been extraordinary and so there is no doubt that the evidence we are dealing with now is quite different to what was publicly available and the evidence that we had last week. I'll finish here and then I'll go to Michelle.

REPORTER: The Victorian Government has insinuated that this has been a product of a failure of federal regulation in this area to allow this to happen. If it is that it's taken media reporting to get to these new revelations, what is happening at the regulation level that it takes for media reporting for new revelations to come to it?

BURKE: You always work on the basis of evidence. You always work on the basis of evidence. And some evidence comes to our regulators, there will be a whole lot of evidence that will have been collected in other areas by the Fair Work Ombudsman with the work that they do. Sometimes additional evidence comes through the media. On this occasion, the evidence about organised crime has come through the media. I'm grateful that that's been exposed and that's why we're acting. Michelle.

REPORTER: Well, just following up on that. You're very close to the union movement. You've got a large department, as well as the regulator and police, etcetera, being involved in this. Are you telling us that you had, your department, had no inclination of organised crime infiltrating this union, which has been going on, obviously, for some time, and if so, how can Nick McKenzie know about it, but your department, you and others don't?

BURKE: I think some of this goes to the nature of organised crime, but this is something I had not been previously briefed on, and it is something that, as I say, never heard of. Not in terms of organised crime, no. The organised crime issue, and I just go to it, was published as an exclusive. That's because this was new information.

REPORTER: Minister, given the emerging links with organised crime, how comfortable are you about the many millions of dollars this union has brought to Federal Labor? Should you, as some have suggested, be handing some of that money back, or at the very least, should you be ceasing to take donations from the CFMEU going forward?

BURKE: There are decisions on donations, some state governments have already taken them, as you've seen publicly. The National Executive is meeting, I think, tomorrow, where there will be some strong decisions that will come in terms of any organisation at all that is placed into administration in terms of donations.

REPORTER: What’s your personal view?

BURKE: If I can, just because there's a part of your question I haven't dealt with before I deal with the next one. And the part of your question which you referred to others raising it, and I'm very glad you've given me the chance to respond to it. The concept of handing money back is one of the most astonishing and absurd ideas I've seen. Are the Liberal Party seriously suggesting that at this moment, the action of the Government should be that we hand money to the CFMEU? That's what they are arguing. And I just find it, of all the things to suggest the idea, and I'm not blaming you, you've simply put someone else's position to me – that of all the concepts, with all this evidence, that the position of the Liberal Party is that we should be giving money to the CFMEU is absurd.

REPORTER: Nothing astonishing or absurd about suggesting you might not take it in future, Minister.

BURKE: That's right, and that's why I've referred to the decisions they've made. Quite properly, they're not made by Ministers, these decisions. I usually only find out about amounts when journalists know the numbers. It's not something that interests me and certainly not something that influences me. But the National Executive will be meeting tomorrow and dealing with this in a fairly firm fashion. A number of state branches have already done so.

REPORTER: So do you think it's likely that it will be suspended from the federal Labor Party.

BURKE: I'll leave it to the National Executive to do the National Executive's job. You know where to go to be able to get that information. The division between their role and the role of Ministers is important.

REPORTER: Minister, how likely do you think that there will be opposition to the moves to put in administration that you were saying before that if there was opposition you would put through legislation, how likely do you think that that move would happen? And if it did come to that point, would you have any sort of prospect of putting it through the Parliament if like Opposition, Greens, whatever, providing obfuscation on it, for instance?

BURKE: The first thing is there are other issues in workplace relations where there is always a level of argument, and I respect that. The legislation that we will bring forward if this has not been resolved by the time Parliament returns is legislation that will be tightly focused on this issue and nothing else. We're not going to try to smuggle other issues into it or something like that. It will be tightly focused on making sure that applications from the regulator are successful in dealing with the appointment of administrators. I respect that there will always be an argument between myself and the Opposition in terms of things like the ABCC, and that argument will always be there. I'll let the Opposition speak for themselves and if they want to say that the organisation shouldn't be put into administration, that's a matter for them. I'll go to the back row now. Start with Ron.

REPORTER: Mister Burke, I just spent the morning talking to Victorian businesses who say that they are incredibly fearful. They've faced significant pressure to come under CFMEU EBAs and that they've lost work by not doing so, and they now have gone to the Fair Work Ombudsman. The Fair Work Ombudsman says, oh, there's no way to do this anonymously. You've got to put your name on the record. They’re fearful after watching the union royal commission, you know, people put their hands up, put their heads above the parapet and then found that there was retribution years after the fact. What measures will you put in place now, so that as the Fair Work Ombudsman goes about that EBA process, that complaints and that information can be funneled anonymously, or that there are measures in place to stop the retribution, not just in the next couple of months but in potentially, say one or two years that makes these people so afraid to talk?

BURKE: There is further work that will always have to be done on this. I don't doubt the examples you've given at all, because I met with a business yesterday with an almost identical story to what you just described. Cleaning out who's in the organisation and getting rid of some of these elements is a very significant part of that and we should not underestimate the change that that would make. But certainly, all forms of coercion need to be dealt with and being able to go through the enterprise agreements should be able to give us the evidence, some of that evidence. We will have more to say when the Fair Work Ombudsman comes back with that. But I don't doubt the problem that you've described. Charles.

REPORTER: Drifting slightly out of your portfolio, but moving forward, given there have been some reporting that recently negotiated CFMEU deals have added up to 10% to apartment costs and to the construction of, particularly houses in a housing crisis, do you think some of that could have been avoided by acting earlier and moving forward, will this help the process from here given the shortage that currently exists?

BURKE: This will definitely help the process from here. Some of the things that we have done have already helped the process. While critics don't like the numbers on this, the reality is, since we abolished the ABCC, the number of days lost to industrial disputes has fallen and fallen by 30%. It was during the years of the ABCC that these elements significantly rose to power. Let's not forget the ABCC was never able to conduct a criminal investigation. They were not a criminal body, they were a civil body. They're often described and put in the same argument about criminal behaviour. That was not within their legal remit. It's not what they were, but what they did was push people into their corners. When you push people into their corners, it is no surprise that the most militant will rise to the top. That is exactly what has happened. What we need now, having started to attack that culture, is to be able to have administrators in who can deal with various personnel who ought not be in the roles that they have.

REPORTER: You said earlier that you wouldn't deregister the union because of a legacy work choices rule that meant that someone could still operate, not registered. Are you going to close that loophole?

BURKE: I personally have a view in favour of registered organisations having the significant role. The reality is, at the moment there is no pathway through the Parliament on changing that. There are some organisations that are not registered that traditionally the Coalition have been very close to. There are some organisations that are not registered that the Green Party has been quite close to and I don't believe that pathway is open.

REPORTER: The ACT branch of the union have put forward a motion asking for greater powers to prosecute and investigate companies. Do you think that that's appropriate given the allegations that we're seeing in NSW and Victoria? And do you think we need to see investigations into other state branches?

BURKE: I missed the last part, sorry.

REPORTER: Do you think we need to see other investigations into other state branches?

BURKE: Certainly what we're talking about with administrators is not limited to Victoria. It's not limited to Victoria, but it will be the decision of the regulator to work out where it goes. But I want to make sure, and I want to give them the full power to act in the public interest. I have full confidence in Mr Furlong as regulator, as the General Manager of the Fair Work Commission. In terms of the ACT issue, I'm not well across it. I read the article in today's paper. I understand that the Chief Minister has ruled it out, is a report that I've seen and I'm glad. What we're talking about with procurement would appear to be the exact opposite of what was described in that story. I'll go to the back row now before I come to the front.

REPORTER: Thanks Minister, you've obviously made a lot of changes during your time, including under the closing the loopholes bill. Given some of the allegations that have come out, are you concerned that any of those changes could be exploited, say, such as, like right of entry changes, and will you look to review some of those to make sure that those safeguards are in place?

BURKE: The two right of entry changes that have been made, one goes to wage theft, the other goes to workplace safety. The workplace safety one was a direct result of the Boland Review where we committed to implement all the recommendations. Anything on right of entry we've made sure that there are specific review periods. The review period on the Boland one is only, I think, from memory, nine months or something of implementation before it comes in. So, it'll be reviewed responsibly to make sure, but certainly I had a strong view that when it comes to implementing recommendations on workplace safety, we should go with the Boland Report, make those implementations, and then review it. Because to deal with the sorts of risks that you've described. But obviously we are always dealing with a risk of workplace safety. We need to take that seriously. I said I'd go here first.

REPORTER: Thanks for the second question. You've spoken about the inadequacies in this case, as you said of the ABCC, what about the Registered Organisations Commission, which also was abolished? Is there a role maybe for restoring that or a version of that so it can better police this behaviour?

BURKE: The powers of the Registered Organisations Commission are the powers that were transferred to the General Manager of the Fair Work Commission, who I've just said I have full confidence in what he's doing. But if it ends up being that the legislation and this part of it was not changed when we made that shift, but if the legislation does not create a clear enough path to putting administrators in different roles and the attempts from the regulator are challenged, then when Parliament returns we’ll legislate.

REPORTER: What about legislation more broadly, Minister, because some of the revelations this week have been about convicted criminals working in the unions being appointed as delegates for the union or associates of bikie gangs doing that. So, you know, under current law, you can't be a company director if you've had a criminal conviction. You know, it'll stop you in business getting ahead. Why shouldn't there be a law? Or would you be open to considering a law that stops delegates in that way being appointed if they've got criminal convictions?

BURKE: I want to focus right now on cleaning out the organisation and I don't want this legislation, the moment it deals with more than one issue, we're in very different negotiations with the Senate. I want to be able to give clarity that we are dealing with one issue. We might not have to deal with it at all if applications from the General Manager are not opposed. But if we end up with a situation where we're going to be in a protracted legal argument, my view is change the law, get this done.

REPORTER: What about the FWO? Do you think this saga demonstrates that the Fair Work Ombudsman needs sharper teeth or more resources devoted to it?

BURKE: The Fair Work Ombudsman will always evolve and will always need to evolve. There will never be enough resources in the Fair Work Ombudsman to deal with every challenge in workplaces around Australia. But we always need to be reviewing the capacity and the powers of the Fair Work Ombudsman. Thank you very much.

ENDS