The High Court has denied an ABCC challenge to a Federal Court decision which exonerated CFMEU officials over a dispute at a Melbourne building site that failed to provide separate toilet amenities for female construction workers.

“The ABCC has flushed a ridiculous sum of cash down the toilet defending the right of grubby employers to save pennies by refusing to provide women’s amenities on a construction site,” said Dave Noonan, CFMEU National Construction Secretary.

“Women have the right to work in the construction industry and they absolutely have the right be treated decently in this industry.”

“Fundamental to this right is the expectation that women will be provided with safe and sanitary washing and toilet facilities.”

“It is bizarre and disturbing that in the 21st Century the construction industry regulator would try to deny this in the highest court in the land.”

“Thankfully, the High Court evidently has a greater sense of decency than the ABCC.”

“It is shameful that the ABCC would go all the way to the High Court to try to defend unscrupulous bosses from providing even the simplest and most basic form of workplace dignity as having separate toilets for women.”

“Time and time again the ABCC has revealed itself to be grotesquely out of step with community standards and expectations of how an independent regulator should behave.”

“The ABCC is a recidivist organisation when it comes to undermining workplace decency and dignity, repeatedly showing itself to be a failed and partisan regulator.”

“The ABCC was created as a political cudgel to attack workers and it clearly needs to go.”