Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee, , 7:11:38 to 7:16:00
Senator Kovacic expresses concern over a "black hole" of information regarding employee misconduct that may not be reported to the Commission by the CFMEU administrator.
Topics: Workplace relations, Integrity, Government spending
Speakers: Patrick Coyle, Senator Maria Kovacic, Murray Furlong
Okay, thank you. Is there a requirement for the administrator to notify the commission where an investigation substantiates serious misconduct by a CFMU official and perhaps if that um CFME official is terminated?
The the CFME administrator, and he has exercised this power previously has the power to refer matters to me for investigation. And we have uh initiate investigations and a prescribe certain thresholds for the Commission to satisfy in relation to those interactions. And I so those powers have been exercised by the administrator and we have acted in accordance with our obligations under the IRO Act as well.
Senator, if I can add, um I think probably some of the difficulty that we're having in answering some of these questions belongs to the limited jurisdiction that we have. The general manager is the regulator of the financial regulator of the registered organisation, and we are responsible for investigating civil penalties, including directors or officers' duties which apply to those elected officials. We're talking here about from the information you've provided, an organiser in New South Wales. There are some limited cases where an organiser may be an officer, but in most cases they are not. They are an employee of the union. Um some of what you're talking about could, in the theoretical sense, step into some sort of those corrupting benefits issues. They may be simple conflict of interest issues as between that person and their employer, but as it at its most simple, these are then issues as between the employer and the employee about whether the employee is conducting their employment in accordance with their duties.
Thank you. And just for transparency, I'm not being difficult with the detail given that you don't have awareness. I don't want to share further detail because I don't think that's appropriate given that you don't have that level of awareness. But I guess that that's where my concern is that I've articulated a number of times today. I understand the parameters from which in from within which you're trying to operate, and without having the administrator here, we have this entire black hole of information that we cannot get. And I'm really concerned about my ability to do my job to scrutinize when I can't get the information. So this is why we're sort of picking around at the edges to try and understand what we can. So what I'm trying to get at is if there has been if there has been a serious um misconduct issue with an employee that's not an official, they may not, the administrator doesn't necessarily have to notify you because they're not officials because they are just employees. Is that correct?
Strictly speaking, possibly. Possibly.
And Senator Senator, if I may add, for the purposes of the removed persons elements, a person who is an employee of the union can become a removed person by the activity of the administrators. So if a question were to come to us at some point in time about an individual, we may find out through engagement with the administrator that a person has become a removed person through the conduct of the administrator.
And that's where my total confusion in this whole thing is. So how can you properly do your job and identify matters that warrant regulatory action and intervention if you don't know all of the instances of when this is happening of what these people are doing?
Senator, just like most regulators, we we respond to information that we receive.
So if you're not getting it, you don't know. The administrator is not telling you you can't respond.
We the point the point at which the administrator takes action in relation to employees perhaps not the relevant point of engagement for us. The point of engagement for us would be if someone who may be a removed person shows up in a different organisation without having obtained the certificate, and someone makes a complaint to us about that, and we can then investigate, and there are significant civil penalties attached to that behaviour.
Thank you. I'll put the balance of the questions on notice that relate to the specifics. Thank you.