Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

I withdraw. Let me come to the Prime Minister's performance in question time today. This Prime Minister likes to talk about leadership principles. At the recent launch of former Victoria Police commissioner Christine Nixon's memoirs, the Prime Minister lauded Ms Nixon as:

… person of integrity who opposed corruption at every turn.

The Prime Minister said the book was 'a record of Christine's leadership'. These are traits that the Prime Minister clearly admires in others but has not adopted for herself.

We have heard repeatedly this week that the Prime Minister has full confidence in the member for Dobell. She accepts his explanation for the use of his union credit card to pay for escort services, cash advances and tens of thousands of dollars on his election campaign—reportedly undeclared to the Australian Electoral Commission. The Prime Minister apparently does not want the member for Dobell to provide that explanation to the people of Australia, let alone to the members of the Health Services Union.

This week the coalition has attempted to provide the member for Dobell with every opportunity to speak under parliamentary privilege to the Australian people and the tens of thousands of members of the Health Services Union about the explanation he gave the Prime Minister in relation to these allegations, the explanation upon which the Prime Minister bases her full confidence in the member for Dobell. Yes, last night the national secretary of the Health Services Union said:

Anyone in our organisation who misuses union money—be it for prostitution services or other unauthorised services—has committed a crime and in particular has defrauded the membership.

The Prime Minister should inform the Australian people whether she believes that such conduct would constitute fraudulent and criminal behaviour. We are unlikely to know. As Kathy Jackson said of the member for Dobell:

... he should go on the record and repeat those statements ... He owes it to the members of the Health Services Union.

The Prime Minister does not respect the wishes of the Health Services Union members, the tens of thousands of members of that union who Kathy Jackson described as:

... working-class people, they earn less than $20 an hour doing work that nobody else wants to do ... These people are salt of the earth. These people deserve answers ...

Yet the Prime Minister has gone to extraordinary lengths to protect the member for Dobell and to prevent him from giving a statement to this parliament under parliamentary privilege.

We are not talking about a few dollars here and a few dollars there; we are talking about the systematic and calculated defrauding of what the union claims to be over $100,000. Under this Prime Minister, Labor has made every effort to hide these allegations and protect the member for Dobell from scrutiny.

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