Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

The advice that I have received from the department is that the amount of money that the government is saving on behalf of the taxpayer has been replaced by a private provider and supporter of Ethical Clothing Australia, which suggests that money had always been available for anyone in the industry who wants to ensure that the sourcing of clothing, footwear and textiles et cetera is from an ethical corporation. And therefore the money that the taxpayers have already expended—the $7 million—could probably have been better spent, given that the private sector has already agreed to replace that funding in order to ensure that there is an accreditation process in place.

The government do not believe that we can continue to use taxpayers' money to subsidise the union. I know that, when the Labor Party were in office, they did much of this support for the union, because they are obviously inextricably linked to the union movement. While I do not want to be critical of the member, he of course is a union boss himself from past times, as is his brother as well, and I can understand that Labor does like to use taxpayers' money to support the unions. But it is the unions' job to look after workers. For that, they collect subsidies and licences from their members and from businesses that want to be involved in their various programs, and they are the correct sources of funding for a program such as this—not the Australian taxpayer.

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