Doorstop, Federal Press Gallery

12 August 2024

JOURNALIST: Just a couple of quick ones on CFMEU obviously, you know how important is it that there is a crack down on this construction?

JANE HUME: Corruption in the CFMEU is a problem it's been hiding in plain sight for years. The Coalition have called it out many many times. But let's not forget that the first thing that Anthony Albanese did when he came to government was to dismantle the ABCC the only body that was monitoring behavior on construction sites. Why did he do this? Who was calling for this? It was the CFMEU that was calling for this. So Anthony Albanese has been holding on to the CFMEU from day one. Now, thanks to the good work of Channel Nine and particularly Nick McKenzie, this has been called out but we've known it's been going on for such a long time and particularly my home state of Victoria, where the cost of building has been inflated by is estimated to be as much as 30% because of the behavior of the CFMEU because of the grip that the CFMEU has on by state and federal governments. And because all of those construction projects have pushed up the price of construction in my state and right around the country. So if you're paying high taxes, it's because of the CFMEU. If your hospital is not up to scratch, it's because the state governments have been putting money into CFMEU run projects, rather than the health system. If your roads are inadequate, it's because it doesn't have the money to fix the roads because it's putting it all into cost blowouts on construction projects. That's the power of the CFMEU. It is costing taxpayers money every single day. The question is does the Albanese government have the political will to make a serious change? We want to say the CFMEU deregistered, we want to see the ABCC and the Registered Organisation Commission reestablished and we want to see criminals that are prosecuted that have been corrupted and the ability for the union to demerge so that good solid union members that have been doing the right thing for years that have been counted distribution by criminal gangs by bike use by underworld figures and by corrupt officials to get on with their lives.

JOURNALIST: And so will the Coalition support the legislation today for an administrator to be brought in?

JANE HUME: Well, we'll see the details of that legislation when it comes to the full complement. Quite frankly, if the ABCC hadn't been dismantled originally, potentially this wouldn't have been necessary. If the Government had supported the Coalition's Ensuring Integrity Bill back in the last parliament this wouldn't be necessary.

JOURNALIST: Would the Coalition re-establish an ABCC if re-elected?

JANE HUME: The Coalition has already said that restoring the ABCC is a priority in order to clean up behavior on work sites in this specific sector.

JOURNALIST: Tanya Plibersek also has some environment legislation that she is looking to bring. How concerned are you about deals between Labor and the Greens over environmental policy?

JANE HUME: One of the great concerns with environmental legislation, it’s very important don't get me wrong, we all want to say clean air, clean water, clean soil. But wrapping up our economy in the green tape is causing projects to slow down. It's costing Australians more because to get a new mine site, to get a gas field, even to get new housing development is costing Australians more because we're wrapping up our economy in green tape. That's what the Coalition will be looking for. That's our concern. The Greens don't care about that. They say that they care about rents going up. They say that they can care about a lack of housing in this country and yet they're quite happy to wrap up new housing developments

JOURNALIST: The polling out today on basically every newspaper says that that could be more likely that there could be more likely to be a minority government. I mean, what would that look like for Australians, a minority Labor Green government?

JANE HUME: Well, it won't come as any surprise if I tell you that the only poll that matters to the coalition is the one that we see on election day. But what this polling told me is that Australians have woken up to the fact that the Albanese Government is not on their side. It's running an agenda that is entirely separate to what's important to ordinary Australians, which is the cost of living, the fact that this Government have failed to address the cost of living they've failed to address the root cause, which is inflation is now being called out by the RBA and Australians have read just having reinforce what they've known for a long time that the priorities of Labor Government elsewhere. I think that the most telling thing for me, though, is that the reset that the Government were looking for over the break has not come to fruition. They were looking for an opportunity to come back from this winter recess with a fresh team and a fresh approach. But Australians realise Murray Watt doesn't have the political will to clean up the CFMEU. That Clare O’Neil isn't going to build 1.2 million houses anytime soon. That Tony Burke's track record as an Immigration Minister was so abysmal that border protection is out the window. And one of the most pressing issues is productivity, which has gone backwards in this country, which is why our economic growth has stalled. And productivity is driven by skills and labour, they’ve put Andrew Giles in charge of this portfolio. Australians have given up on this government already. The idea that we might go into a minority government is something that Australian should fear. Minority governments are chaos, they’re disruptive, they’re ineffectual, and Australians deserve.