Save money: ditch ABCC

Julia Irwin: Federal Labor MP
House of Representives 25 May 2009

I want to turn to one budget item that I regard as a disgraceful waste of public money, one which represents a continued attack on the rights of a group of Australian workers. Under the portfolio of the Minister of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations we have an appropriation of $33,446,000 for the office of the Australian Building and Construction Commission. Some of us, especially on the Labor side, recall that at the time of the last election Labor promised to allow the ABCC to continue until 2010 and that a review would be conducted, and I for one would have expected this budget item to be much reduced because it is for only half a year. We have of course had the Wilcox review, which recommended the extension of the ABCC for some time, but what staggers me about the ABCC is the size of its funding. It is more than $33 million a year. I am sure it is great at job creation for union-bashing lawyers, but that is one group of workers I would like to see retrenched.

The ABCC is limited to building and construction industry workplaces, but its budget is almost half that of the former Office of the Workplace Ombudsman, who was responsible for all other Commonwealth workplace laws. Comparing the ABCC with Comcare, the government’s workplace safety and rehabilitation body, which gets $5 million this year, the ABCC gets six times as much. Here we have a situation where on average one construction or mining worker dies from a workplace injury every week, but this government spends six times as much on union witch-hunts as it does on workplace safety for its employees. It is when you put the appropriation for the ABCC into context by comparing it with other government agencies that you see that it is a very well fed monster. If you compare the ABCC’s appropriation with agencies in the Attorney General’s portfolio, you see that it receives more than twice the $13 million allocation to the Australian Human Rights Commission, more than the $28 million going to the Federal Magistrates Court of Australia and more than twice the $16 million appropriated to the High Court of Australia, the body whose responsibility is ‘to interpret and uphold the Australian Constitution and perform the functions of the ultimate appellate court in Australia’.

If you look at the appropriation of the Australian Crime Commission, it receives $95 million and is responsible for reducing the impact of serious and organised crime in Australia, yet the ABCC gets more than one-third of the amount that goes to fighting serious and organised crime in Australia. I am sure that all Australians can sleep safe in their beds knowing that the government spends so much on chasing a few union members while drug rings and bikie gangs can run riot in our community. But looking at the real concerns of ordinary Australians, in the face of losses of more than $30 billion by 200,000 Australian investors and the collapse of companies like Storm Financial, Great Southern and Timbercorp, the Australian Securities and Investment Commission will spend an extra $20 million this year chasing corporate crooks. That is $33 million to chase building workers and $20 million to chase real criminals in business suits.

How does the ABCC’s appropriation compare with the total appropriation for the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority? It gets $23 million, $10 million less than the ABCC. Just what are the priorities of this government—protecting the savings of ordinary Australians or threatening building workers? It is like the Keystone Cops going after the wrong guy. And what is that $33 million worth to the Australian economy and improving productivity? It should be working wonders, because the ABCC gets only a million dollars less than the Productivity Commission.

But, to really understand how much is wasted on the ABCC, we should compare its appropriation to the salaries of members of this House. The ABCC gets more than the combined base salaries of all 150 members of this House as well as the 76 senators, and what has the ABCC achieved? That is a question that will have to be answered. If I could send a memo to the razor gang working on next year’s budget, it would say to save the people of Australia $33 million and axe the Australian Building and Construction Commission.