Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee, , 7:08:35 to 7:11:38
Discussion on the review of the code of practice for CFMEU organizers and delegates, focusing on behavioral change and retraining efforts under the administration.
Topics: Workplace relations, Workplace culture
Speakers: Murray Furlong, Senator Maria Kovacic, Senator Marielle Smith, Unknown Speaker, Senator Tony Sheldon
Um the recommendation on its own is not a problem. What about if that um organizer um drove around a representative from that organization in their car, took them from site to site, and um went to head contractors and said, you know, these are our best guys, it would be really good if you um use their services.
Would that be considered to be a perhaps a uh I think it certainly warrant it would it would warrant in um warrant investigation or inquiries?
And spoken of it many times in parliament supporting it, but I'm concerned about hypotheticals. Is that quite hypothetical?
Well, there is no ruling uh sorry, no standing order which prevents hypothetical questions being asked in estimates, so it's up to the officials how they'd like to respond.
Yeah, uh so I I guess what I'm trying to understand if particularly given the current circumstances with what we're seeing in Victoria, what we've seen in Queensland, what is now beginning to um unfold in New South Wales and WA, if you have an organizer from the CFM EU taking somebody from an organization around two sites and saying to those head contractors, you know, these are our best guys, would be really good if you could throw some work their way. Um I'm curious as As to what that how that would be perceived by yourselves and the administrator, because if I were one of those head contractors, I would be worried about saying no to that. And I guess more generally then what distinguishes that line between you know recommending someone and making someone feel like they don't have a lot of choice but to comply.
It's I'm trying my best to assist you with this line of questioning Senator. It's it gets more and more difficult the more the the um we extend the um the example. Yeah and I I feel like I I could possibly be moving to a place where I would be misleading if you if I'm asked to um to answer further into the abstract. One of the things that I can say which might provide some assistance is that the in terms of the review of um there's organizers and there's a code of practice for organisers of the CFM EU. It's been uh reviewed by the administration, but there's also a review of the delegates' code of conduct and the del the CFM has over a thousand delegates across the country. And they the branch, each branch is developing a detailed delegate development strategy implementation. So organisers and delegates are being retrained within the and everyone acknowledges that there's further work to be done. But Mr. Crosby and his team are in the process of retraining their delegates and their organisers across the whole raft about matters, including about behavioural change and respected work.