The Senate has passed the government’s tougher building regulator bill, after it agreed to a slew of amendments and deals including changes that boost employment of Australian workers in construction and delayed introduction of the new building code.
The Senate passed the Australian Building and Construction Commission bill 36 votes to 33 on Wednesday after an extended sitting on Tuesday substantially modified it to win crossbench support.
Only Labor, the Greens and Jacqui Lambie opposed it after deals won support from the Nick Xenophon Team, One Nation, Derryn Hinch and David Leyonhjelm.
At a doorstop on Wednesday, Labor’s leader in the Senate, Penny Wong, said the bill was now “unrecognisable” because of the number of changes the “desperate” government had made.
Xenophon negotiated changes to Australian procurement rules, which he described as the “most significant” in Australia’s history, but only indirectly boost Australian content rather than mandating it.
Hinch negotiated a two-year phase-in period for the building code that prevents companies from winning government building work based on the content of their industrial agreements.
Labor also succeeded in passing an amendment, adding a clause to the building code that requires employers to advertise jobs in Australia and demonstrate that no Australian citizen or resident wants the job before hiring someone else.
The clause would cut down the number of temporary skilled 457 visa-holders and working holiday-makers employed on Australian building sites.
The Greens were first to push for an Australian jobs clause but withdrew it to support Labor’s. The government opposed the clause but may need to support it in the lower house as part of deals with its One Nation and Hinch.
The Greens’ industrial relations spokesman, Adam Bandt, told Guardian Australia the jobs clause had “the potential to significantly alter the way guest workers are used and exploited on building sites”.
The Xenophon procurement rule changes, which will apply from 1 March, require:
- Tenderers to show goods and services meet Australian standards
- The government to consider ethical factors including labour standards, occupational health and safety and environmental impacts when awarding contracts
- That economic benefits of the procurement to the Australian economy must be considered for procurements above $4m
“Until now, the commonwealth government has been spending $59bn on goods and services without having to consider compliance with Australian standards, employment and environmental regulations, and the broader impact on the economy,” Xenophon said.
Wong supported the procurement changes but said it was “extraordinary” the Coalition had agreed to them despite criticising Bill Shorten’s push for Australian workers to get preference to temporary skilled 457 visa-holders.
But Bandt criticised Xenophon for not backing a Greens amendment to require 90% Australian steel in projects by companies bidding for government work.
“Before the election he said he’d use the balance of power in the Senate to demand local steel in construction projects,” he said. “And all we’ve ended up with is a requirement that on Australian government projects must comply with Australian standards.”
Bandt said Xenophon had “caved in” to the government and missed an opportunity to give a Christmas present to Arrium Steel and South Australia.
Hinch was concerned about the retrospective effect of the building code attached to the ABCC bill. In its current form, it will bar companies from government work based on agreements made from 24 April 2014.
Hinch said on Wednesday amendments to protect subcontractor pay and stop sham contracting had gone through and the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, had agreed to a two-year phase-in period for the code.
Changes include a clause in the building code requiring companies to comply with obligations to subcontractors and establishing a working group to discuss improving security of payments laws.
On Radio National, Hinch added that the amendments included greater accountability for the ABCC commissioner, requiring impartiality, judicial review of ABCC decisions and Administrative Appeal Tribunal oversight over coercive powers.
He thanked One Nation senator Rodney Culleton for co-sponsoring a number of amendments.
In a further change on Wednesday, the requirement that people forced to give evidence to ABCC cannot tell anyone they had been examined was removed.
Likening the phase-in to paid parental leave, Hinch said if building companies were “pregnant” (that is, not code compliant), they would not be barred from government work for the next two years, allowing them time for their industrial agreements to expire and be renegotiated.
Hinch said the horse-trading over the ABCC bill was “disgusting ... opportunistic and self-serving” and he, unlike other crossbenchers, had focused his efforts at making the bill better.
“All the unions won’t be happy with it, all the builders won’t be happy with it, it’s a sort of a compromise and we’ll have a better ABCC out of it.”
Hinch said it would be a win for the government if the ABCC bill passes but “if we can make it fairer, if we can make it work better” Labor may support it when in government.
On Tuesday the way was cleared to pass the ABCC bill after the Turnbull government came to terms with Nick Xenophon on water allocations in the Murray-Darling Basin.
Xenophon said he had secured two accountability measures to oversee the basin plan – a twice-yearly discussion between the prime minister and premiers at Coag and a Senate estimates process to oversee implementation.
Labor and the Greens have accused Xenophon of selling his party’s vote too cheaply, because the process won’t guarantee the 450 gigalitres of water for the river he had originally demanded.
On Monday senator David Leyonhjelm announced his support for the ABCC bill in a deal that would require the ABC and SBS to hold community forums in regional areas.
Leyonhjelm also forced the government to ditch the reverse onus of proof in the ABCC bill, which would have required employees and unions to prove they took action because of a reasonable concern about an imminent safety concern, rather than to coerce employers.
