One Nation plans to support two government industrial relations bills including the Australian Building and Construction Commission bill, Malcolm Roberts has revealed.
On Sunday Labor’s employment services spokesman, Ed Husic, conceded it was more likely the government would pass the ABCC bill, although it still needs support from the Nick Xenophon Team and two other crossbench senators.
On Friday Roberts told the HR Nicholls Society, which favours labour market deregulation, that One Nation was “inclined to support” the bills because they “promote freedom”.
The two bills introduce two union regulators including a building industry regulator with coercive powers, a building code that uses government procurement to regulate industrial agreement content and tougher penalties for union malfeasance.
One Nation was tipped to support the bills, as Roberts used debate on the Country Fire Authority in the Senate earlier in October to call for higher legal duties for union officials.
Roberts told the HR Nicholls Society he supported the bills because “we want to protect union members rather than the union bosses”.
He claimed taxpayers were paying “unreasonable costs for infrastructure because of the [Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union]”, echoing the government’s claims that the ABCC would lead to higher productivity.
“There are small businesses being frozen out of work in the construction industry because they won’t [go] along with the dictates of the CFMEU and other union bosses.”
Roberts called for unions to be regulated through competition law and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.
“The ACCC needs an industrial relations division that is wealthy and armed to the teeth,” he said. “It must break our cartels in construction, mining, offshore oil and gas.”
Roberts said he had told the employment minister, Michaelia Cash, that his personal view was that Australia should “progress to a position where we eventually get the federal government out of the industrial relations arenas”.
On Sunday Husic told ABC News Breakfast we would have to “wait and see” whether the ABCC bill will pass but “you’d think, on the way that the numbers are being counted at the moment, it’s more likely to”.
“Will it actually lead to better productivity, better safety and better outcomes in the construction sector? Based on previous experience, no.”
The government has 30 seats in the Senate. To pass the bills with One Nation support it will still need the Nick Xenophon Team’s three senators and two of the votes of senator David Leyonhjelm, Derryn Hinch and Family First’s Bob Day or his replacement after he tenders his resignation.
Xenophon is holding out for changes including ensuring the ABCC bill does not harm occupational health and safety by watering down right-of-entry rights and that the government consider national laws to protect subcontractors’ pay.
Hinch has said that he wants to strike a balance to make the ABCC bill “pro-worker and anti-corruption”.
Leyonhjelm’s support for the ABCC bill has been thrown into doubt since he attacked the government for welching on a deal to sunset the importation ban on lever-action shotguns. He has said his support is “50/50”.
On Sunday the communications minister, Mitch Fifield, told Sky News the two industrial relations bills should be passed because the government had won a double dissolution defending them.
He called on Labor to support the registered organisations bill and said the government was “hopeful” it could get enough crossbench support for the ABCC bill, which Labor opposes.
