Nick Xenophon has written to the prime minister calling for uniform laws to prevent subcontractors being ripped off to be considered, and signalling it may help win his support for a tougher building regulator.
On 28 September, Xenophon convened a broad group of industry stakeholders, including unions and bodies representing builders, that agreed on a set of principles to improve security of payment laws, released on Wednesday.
At the time of the meeting Xenophon said improving the laws “may hold the key to the future of the Australian Building and Construction Commission bill”, implying it could win his party’s support for the industrial relations bill that sparked the double-dissolution election.
The joint statement noted that states and territories have different laws for dealing with security of payments. The patchwork creates different obligations for progress payments for head contractors and how quickly they have to settle their bills.
The statement called for the federal government to consider “enhanced national consistency between laws, including options such as model legislation”.
It should also consider “whether related laws, such as those applying to corporations and consumers should also be improved”.
Lastly, it suggested government procurement policies should be reviewed in light of security of payments issues, suggesting builders could lose government work if they fail to pay their sub-contractors on time.
The statement was signed by the Construction Forestry Mining Energy Union (CFMEU), the Subcontractors Alliance, Housing Industry Association, Master Builders of Austarlia and National Electrical and Communications Association and others.
Xenophon wrote to Malcolm Turnbull and the employment minister, Michaelia Cash, this week calling for security of payments laws to be improved.
On 28 September Xenophon said security of payments had to be discussed in the context of the ABCC bill because “people aren’t just concerned about bad behaviour within unions, they’re also concerned about bad behaviour up the contractor chain, up the supply chain, where small and medium subcontractors are left high and dry”.
Xenophon has also proposed ABCC bill amendments including using procurement policy to lift the standard of building materials, in a move to boost Australian products.
The CFMEU’s national construction secretary, Dave Noonan, said Xenophon was “genuinely trying to deal with a very serious issue in the construction industry”.
“With regards to the ABCC, the union has always said you can’t lay all of the problems of the construction industry at feet of unions, such as sham contracting, phoenix activity, insolvencies and terrible safety issues,” he said, citing three deaths in the construction sector in the past week.
Cash is negotiating with the Senate crossbench to pass the ABCC bill and laws to lift governance requirements for unions. The government needs support from Pauline Hanson’s four One Nation senators and Nick Xenophon’s three to pass them.
On Monday senator Malcolm Roberts told the Senate One Nation had consulted industry and unions on the government’s industrial relations agenda and hinted it would support the government’s bills.
He noted the ABCC and Registered Organisations bills could be considered issues of “control versus freedom”, arguing that restrictions on freedom had to have sufficient public benefit to be justified.
Roberts suggested that union bosses’ legal duties should be aligned with those of company directors to create a “level playing field”, a key feature of the registered organisations bill.
In a statement on Tuesday, Roberts said his office had received “economic data on the detrimental effect some union bosses were having on the economy and Aussie battlers through extortion, corruption, and selling their members out for private gain”.
Noonan said the CFMEU “hopes to continue to have some more dialogue with all of the crossbenchers including Mr Roberts and his party about the fact the ABCC laws are designed for big corporations to force down wages and conditions for blue-collar workers, including lots who probably voted One Nation in the hope they would protect them”.
He said the construction code attached to the ABCC bill banned agreements that preference Australian workers over visa-holders, and suggested working holiday visa-holders were not trained properly and should not work in high-risk industries such as construction.
Cash has said she was prepared to negotiate on the ABCC but amendments must not “change the nature or intent of the bill”.
