Senator BRANDIS (Queensland—Attorney-General, Vice-President of the Executive Council and Leader of the Government in the Senate) (19:41): I seek leave to move a motion to vary the hours of meeting and routine of business for today and tomorrow. Leave not granted. Senator BRANDIS: Pursuant to contingent notice standing in my name, I move: That so much of the standing orders be suspended as would prevent me moving a motion to provide for the consideration of a matter, namely a motion to provide that a motion relating to the hours of meeting and routine of business for today and tomorrow may be moved immediately and determined without amendment. The purpose of this motion is to enable the Senate to get on with the business the people sent us here to do. We are in the course of the debate on the Building and Construction Industry (Improving Productivity) Bill and a related bill—the so-called ABCC bills. We have known from day one that the Australian Labor Party and their allies the Greens would do everything they possibly could to frustrate this debate to prevent the debate from being conducted and coming to a resolution this week. Why, one wonders? Let it not be forgotten that this is one of the two bills that the government took to the people at the election on 2 July. This is one of the two bills that were the famous trigger bills for the double dissolution. We took advantage of the mechanism provided for by section 57 of the Constitution. We won the election and now we seek the passage through the parliament of the two bills which justified the double dissolution election and on which the public voted in voting on that election. We know that the Australian Labor Party, with its shrinking base, is more and more, these days, the captive slave of a dwindling number of militant trade unions. We know, in particular, that there are Labor senators in this chamber, led by Senator Penny Wong, who owe their position here, as does Senator Wong herself, to the patronage and political support of the CFMEU. Those who do not owe their position to the patronage and the support of the CFMEU owe it—every last man and woman among them—to other trade unions. Senator BILYK: And proud of it. Senator BRANDIS: You may be proud, Senator Bilyk, to represent a dwindling number of people in the Australian workforce who represent organised labour. We on our side of the chamber have no problem with organised labour, but we do say that organised labour ought to be the subject of the same rule of law and accountability principles as business and other industrial organisations. For all of this year and before, you have heard my colleague Senator Michaelia Cash in question time and in debate describe, time and time again, the thuggery, the savagery, the disgusting behaviour which is the routine of the CFMEU. We know that the Heydon royal commission, which sat for over two years, concluded that the CFMEU and other militant trade unions were responsible for serial law-breaking and a culture of absolute contempt for the rule of law. So what does this bill seek to do? It seeks to restore the rule of law to the building industry, and industry which represents, according to some estimates, 11 per cent of Australia's GDP. Why would you stand against that? Why would you stand against a bill that does nothing more than try to restore the rule of law to what, on any view, is a culture and an area of the economy where the rule of law is not respected? You have to wonder, Mr President, why it is that those opposite are so desperate to stop the restoration of the rule of law to the workplace and particularly to the building industry. I answered that question earlier in my remarks: because so many of them come into this place not as servants of the Australian people but as servants of trade union bosses. As servants of trade union bosses, some of them—not all of them—represent no-one and no interests but the interests of trade unions, including militant, lawless, savage and thug-like trade unions like the CFMEU. So let us get on with this debate.