Gary Hardgrave (Moreton, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Maranoa suggests that some unfair dismissals have taken place, and I am sure the member for Charlton thinks that. Greg Combet, the man who says, ‘I think it would be a good idea if the unions were running Australia again,’ is the preselected Labor candidate forced onto the people of Charlton. The people who got in the way of Combet’s preselection are people like the former member for Charlton, Bob Brown. He had 48 years of membership in the Labor Party; 48 years of dedicated service to the people of the Hunter; 48 years of dedication rewarded recently with an Order of Australia, and the Labor Party said: ‘Get out of our way. We don’t want you anymore. How dare you question our radical ambition to further take control of the Australian parliament with union officials.’

Then we have the poor member for Maribyrnong, who has been an honest toiler—particularly on behalf of the Pacific nations—and has, in fact, stood for something when it comes to the Pacific nations in this place. He has been rolled out by the AWU’s national secretary, Bill Shorten. Dougie Cameron, the National Secretary of the AMWU—he has one of those accents that we get to caricature every so often, but being part Scottish I will defend him in that regard—is entering the New South Wales Senate. I have never heard of Don Farrell, but he is from the shoppies and is entering the South Australian Senate. Richard Marles is entering Corio. The poor member for Corio, who is the only farmer in the Labor Party, the only person who has actually been on the land, will be gone because it is far more convenient for the radical concept of more trade union control in this place to have the Assistant Secretary of the ACTU in that seat. And the ETU have dropped Kevin Harkins into Franklin and it is so bad that even the poor member for Franklin is campaigning against him. The Labor member for Franklin has said: ‘Hang on, this bloke isn’t from our community. He isn’t one of us. He’s nobody who has actually been part of the community. He has been thrown in on us from Victoria. He is an ETU, Dean Mighell acolyte.’ He is now in Franklin and the member for Franklin has walked away from him.

If you look at marginal seats around the country, you will see they cannot queue fast enough. They do not want local champions; they do not want people who have actually participated in their local communities. They want people who have survived the Tammany Hall pressure points, worked their way through the union system and created an environment where they have so much power and so much control that someone now wants to take care of it. The Peter principle is alive and well in the Labor Party—promote them out, stick them into the parliament and inflict them upon the people of Australia.

Worse still, the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Rudd, the member for Griffith, is on record as saying in his address at the National Press Club on 17 April this year that he is hoping to appoint these union bosses to his front bench once they enter parliament. He is hoping to ‘get them in’, as he said, and ‘get them in early’. I do not know how the shadow ministers opposite feel about the fact that they are about to be flicked. They are doing all the work, but Combet, Shorten and Cameron, plus Farrell, Marles and Harkins, are all going to take their places.

Then we get a little bit worse because we look at the craziness of Stephen Jones of the Community and Public Sector Union. Stephen Jones’s idea is that once the Labor Party is in government—and Australians are going to work hard to make sure that does not happen and so are we on this side—they want to have a greater say in policy direction under a Rudd government. The CPSU want to make it compulsory for Commonwealth public servants to join their union. As a result, the Left will get a greater level of affiliation fee paid into the Labor Party and they will be able to hand-pick the cabinets. I do not know who the right-wing members of the cabinet are, but what will happen is that the whole make-up of the caucus and the cabinet will change and they will be in control of the CPSU. That is his ambition. They have put it off, I think, until after the election but that is their radical thinking.

One thing is missing from all of this discussion. What is in this for the average Australian? What is the average Australian actually getting out of this? Are we seeing a boost to their job security? Are we seeing an opportunity for them to earn more money? Are we seeing an opportunity for them to participate more fully in the running of their country? A democracy is where the people are in charge. It amazes me to listen to speeches of members opposite when we talk about industrial relations matters—no doubt we will hear it again through the course of this MPI—that they always talk about the unions, the union bosses and the rights of the unions. They never actually stand up for the workers; they forget about the workers. One of the reasons for that—and I am happy to be proved wrong, because I am a very generous sort of person—is that not one member opposite, despite their membership of a trade union, despite the fact that they have been a trade union official, has ever actually worked on the tools. Where are the mechanics? Where are the plumbers? I see the member for Macarthur is here. We have a mechanic over here. We have a few other people with trade skills as well, but where are the tradies opposite?

My grandfather Perce was a member of the TWU until the day he died because he thought there was a funeral benefit in it. He voted for the coalition, though. The last job of my grandfather Alan McKinnon, my mother’s father, was doing pick and shovel work for the Gold Coast City Council. He lived in the member for Moncrieff’s area. I am saying that they were workers. One was a truck driver; one was a labourer. They told me that it was all about looking after the average person and making sure their aspirations were well met. That is what we stand for on this side. This side has delivered a 20 per cent improvement in the income stream of average Australians. On the other side, their track record in government saw a decline in the amount of money that people got to take home. That is the great shame of what the Labor Party of 2007 have become. They have become so manufactured by poll groups and by this narrow and ever-narrower gene pool of trade union membership, trade union officials—to be narrowed further at the next election—that they have forgotten about Australians. They have forgotten about workers. They have forgotten about the average person who has an ambition—an ambition to own a home, to grow a family and to do better than they did before.

My father was a metal machinist by trade. I do not want medals for making these comments; I simply make the point that I know where I came from. There are no silver spoons in my family. I deliberately chose the Liberal Party because the Liberal Party showed me very plainly that, if you are prepared to put the effort in, you can achieve. That has been the ambition of those on this side of the parliament ever since I walked in here on 30 April 1996. As a government, we have stood very firmly on the side of liberating the opportunities for individual people. On that side, they want to restrict them. They want to see a union ‘no ticket, no start’ approach. There is no sense of trust in the workplace. ‘The boss is going to do you over.’ ‘Everything you try and do, you will fail at.’ So the message is: ‘Don’t do anything. Victimhood is waiting for you around the corner.’

That is the mantra of the modern Labor Party today. They are living off the efforts of trade union officials of the past—people who actually stood for something 100 years ago, who stood for safe workplaces, who stood for better conditions and better terms, who stood for better opportunities for people. But the trade union movement of today stands for one thing: to filter as many people through its system as it can into places like this. Every parliament around Australia has trade union officials of some note promoted into it, circulating through it. That is the real reason why trade union officials appear.

I heard the health minister say today, with regard to Nepean Hospital, that there is a sense of using workers as pawns. I have to say, as the son of a metalworker, and as the grandson of a truck driver and a labourer, that it is a disgrace and it is disgusting that the Labor Party and the trade union movement have stooped as low as they have. The worst part is that after the next election, if those people that they want to draft into this place actually get up, things will only ever get worse. The people of Australia are not going to be fooled. That is why this matter is a matter of public importance today.

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