Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union

Ms CATHERINE KING (Ballarat—Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government) (15:14): I'll answer that in my own capacity as the minister for infrastructure who is responsible for the agreement that we have between every state and territory on the delivery of infrastructure projects. Be in no doubt: the behaviour that we've seen from the CFMEU is absolutely unacceptable, and this government has taken the strongest possible action to actually deal with it. For 10 years you talked about it, but you didn't actually do anything about it. This government has placed the union in administration, which means—and the reason that some of these issues are now coming to light is because of that—

Honourable members interjecting—

The SPEAKER: No. The minister can pause. The Deputy Leader of the Opposition's screaming across the chamber; other members are interjecting. The member for Fisher's on a warning; the member for New England is on one. The minister is answering, directly, a question that she was asked by the member for Flinders. How about we just tone it down. Just listen to what the minister is saying. She's providing information to the House and she deserves to be heard in silence. She has the call.

Ms CATHERINE KING: As I said, we have taken the strongest action by placing the CFMEU in administration, and some of the issues that are now coming to light are coming to light because it is in administration. And we are dealing with those issues.

From an infrastructure point of view, what we did was: obviously, we have supported the appointing of the independent administrators. We asked the Fair Work Ombudsman to undertake a targeted review of all enterprise agreements made by, particularly, the Victorian branch of the construction division of the CFMEU that apply to the Big Build projects. We requested that the AFP investigate allegations and work cooperatively with state police to investigate and prosecute any criminal breaches. We will use our procurement powers to ensure that enterprise agreements on government funded projects are genuine agreements and that workplaces are free from coercion and intimidation.

Ms CATHERINE KING: Really? Really?

Mr Sukkar: Yes, really.

The SPEAKER: Order! The minister will pause. The Manager of Opposition Business, on a point of order.

Mr Sukkar: The point of order is on relevance. It was a very tight question and asked the minister if she has asked her department how much taxpayers' money has been siphoned to organised crime—not agreements; not cooperation with other agencies. 'Have you asked your department: has Australia taxpayers' money been siphoned to organised crime?' If you haven't asked your department to do so, you're free to say no.

The SPEAKER: I just want to make sure the minister is being directly relevant about the question she was asked. It was a very specific question regarding one element of allegations, but she just needs to make sure that her answer, when talking about the subject matter, is directly relevant to what the department has done and what action she's taken.

Ms CATHERINE KING: As the member who just interrupted my answer then knows, the Commonwealth does not directly procure infrastructure projects. We do those through agreements with every state and territory. But where the Commonwealth has direct funding and a contracting role—such as with the Western Sydney airport—I have asked, quite some time ago now, my department to advise me in relation to all of those projects. The Minister for Finance and I wrote to chairs of the ARTC, the Western Sydney Airport Corporation and National Intermodal seeking assurances that they comply with all relevant laws, demonstrating efficient, effective, economical and ethical expenditure of taxpayer money, and that allegations or instances of improper or criminal conduct be reported immediately. We did that sometime ago. Where the Commonwealth partners with states and territories, we've got a new federated funding agreement, and in that agreement we embedded new requirements for our funding agreement, to prevent these issues from occurring, including emphasising the importance of our— (Time expired)