Peter Dutton denounced for suggesting import of asbestos is CFMEU's fault

The immigration minister, Peter Dutton, has been blasted by the Asbestos Disease Foundation of Australia and the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) for his attempt to blame the union for asbestos importation.

The foundation’s president, Barry Robson, said it was “outrageous” of Dutton to claim that cost pressures from union wage claims had driven builders to import unsafe building materials.

Asked on 2GB on Thursday about importation of asbestos building materials, Dutton first blamed $700m of Labor cuts to customs for failed asbestos checks.

“We have put that money back in and put the 700 staff that they took out back in,” he said.

His comments followed the discovery of asbestos roof panels at the $1.2bn Perth children’s hospital project.

Dutton said there were 2.4m containers coming into Australia and said “we can’t inspect every container”.

He then took aim at the cost of commercial construction in Australia.

“You look at buildings, hospitals, roads, where you’ve got heavy CFMEU involvement – they talk about a 40% additional cost in building a block of units because of CFMEU involvement – and obviously that has some behaviours, including driving builders to use this product which is completely unacceptable,” he said.

Robson said the interview was “a shocker, it was outrageous and [Ray] Hadley didn’t even challenge him”.

“The builders, the developers, they are going to source cheap material anyway,” he said. “It improves their bottom line or helps them fill a low-cost tender.

“For Dutton to say just being a union job adds 40% to the cost and then blame the union is outrageous.”

Robson rejected the idea customs needed to search 2.4m containers, but agreed better resourcing of the Australian border force would help combat the problem.

“It’s not like a container that someone has smuggled drugs in where customs don’t know the contents,” he said. “Customs know what every container that comes in with building materials has got, because it has to have paperwork, the manifest.

“They know what container comes on what ship, into what port ... They can hold it up to three days on the wharf. There’s plenty of time for customs to go down and inspect these containers.”

Robson warned that failure to stop asbestos importation would create a “fourth wave of asbestos victims” and said using Australian building materials should be mandated.

The CFMEU construction division’s national secretary, Dave Noonan, said Dutton’s comments were “bizarre”.

“They reflect the minister’s desire to avoid responsibility for the demonstrated poor performance of his department by clumsily seguing into a smear of the CFMEU,” he said.

“It’s a transparent approach and I don’t think the Australian people will accept exposure to asbestos is somehow the union’s fault.”

Noonan said it was a union delegate at Multiplex’s 1 William Street site who had first discovered asbestos, sparking concerns the unsafe building material was making it past customs checks.

The CFMEU is calling for a halt in negotiations for a free trade deal with India until customs procedures are fixed, because it says India is the second largest manufacturer of products made with asbestos.

“We’ve [already] got a free trade agreement with China and China is sending us asbestos which kills people,” Noonan said.

“The minister clearly doesn’t have the capacity in his department to keep Australian workers safe.

“I’m not prepared to put members’ lives at risk and people incurring mesothelioma, a devastating cancer, just so the government can tick a free trade box.”