Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak against this motion even though I have a lot of time for the member for Wright—unlike some of his other colleagues here tonight who have ranted and raved and made allegations they would never have the guts to make outside this place. They stand in here and make all these allegations about people, but clearly the simple facts show that those opposite have absolutely no idea how unions work and how they go. The previous speaker is a prime example. He wants to make an across-the-board claim about union officials living on larger-than-life salaries, but that is just painfully untrue. It is incorrect, and it is a slight on the hardworking people who are out there protecting workers whose wages and conditions this lot want to savage.

I note that because the first point of the member for Wright's motion reads:

… serious allegations have been made surrounding the misappropriation of union members funds by union leaders …

They have broad-brushed this to blame every single union official and every single union leader. You want to claim in this motion that every single one of them is rorting their union funds. That is wrong—dead wrong.

Mr Buchholz interjecting—

You should have got your motion and read it properly, because you have made the claim that every union is in there. The fact of the matter is that there are many unions. I am a member of the Transport Workers Union and very proud of it, and I know that those blokes do not earn anywhere near the money that is being claimed. They get out there and work hard and deliver results that are in the interests of their members on, say, freights, which this lot opposed. They do not believe that the people who drive trucks deserve a fair rate of pay for themselves and their families.

Union officials right across this country are out there every day, in some cases slaving away in factories. I am thinking of officials of the Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union, which operates in an industry where people are in low-paid work. These TCFU officials are not earning good money for being union officials, but they get out there and do the job because they care about people. They get out there and care about what happens to people and how they live, and they give them the opportunity to get a fair day's pay for a fair day's work. If you go through what has been said previously in this debate, you have to laugh at the member for Moncrieff, who either had had too many Red Bulls or, seriously, there are a couple of cogs missing in his gearbox. The claims that he made were just outrageous. He said everyone in the Labor Party is the result of the union movement. That is a lie, plain and simple. I have never been an official of a union. I have been in many unions and continue to support unions.

This motion says that all union officials have been misappropriating funds. Let us have a look on the other side of the fence. We have the Fair Work Australia thing going on at the moment that is looking into one union—an issue with one union. At the same time that this is happening, Lend Lease, an Australian company, has been fined $54 million for overbilling its clients for a decade in America. If we used the member for Wright's terminology, then all business owners are crooks. That is the stupidity of the way this has been put. We know that all businesspeople are not. I do not think you were a crook when you were running your business, were you? It is the same thing.

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