Alan Tudge (Aston, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

We will talk about integrity in government all day long. We are very happy to compare our record in relation to integrity with the Labor Party's record in relation to integrity. I can tell you one thing, Mr Speaker, as a member of parliament, the first thing to have integrity about is to actually live in the electorate which you represent. I point out that the member for Isaacs lives in the beautiful suburb called Malvern, which is not even one electorate away but two electorates away from the suburbs which he pretends to represent in Carrum and Patterson Lakes and the like. All I can say is that at least he is very well represented by the member for Higgins in the seat in which he resides.

There are actually three components in relation to integrity in government. First of all, there is the integrity of the individuals on your team; secondly, there is the integrity of your party—that is so important if you want to have a government with integrity; and, thirdly, there is the integrity of your decisions. I would like to go through each of those three elements. I would put to you, Mr Speaker, and put to the parliament that our record stacks up very finely against the record of the Labor Party in relation to those three things: the integrity of our individuals versus theirs, the integrity of our party versus theirs; and the integrity of our decisions versus theirs.

Let me start with the individuals, particularly on the Labor side. I have mentioned Eddie Obeid. He is a well-known figure and he is well known to the member for Watson, who has frequented his beautiful ski chalet. He was the kingmaker in New South Wales. He pulled all the strings, but he was found to be corrupt by the Independent Commission Against Corruption and is facing very serious charges. I mentioned Craig Thomson, a man who only recently sat in this parliament and was defended day in, day out by every single one of those Labor members of parliament. He was using union funds for services which I will not even mention in this parliament. A magistrate found him guilty—this is the Labor member for Dobell—of 65 charges of theft and fraud. I could mention Michael Williamson. He was the President of the Labor Party. He was found to be corrupt and sentenced to five years jail. These are three individuals just in the last couple of years—very senior members of the Labor Party, senior parliamentarians and very senior kingmakers within the Labor Party.

If you want to then go to maybe a head-to-head contest with our leaders and you want to line up the Leader of the Opposition versus our Prime Minister in relation to the integrity stakes, let's have a look at Bill Shorten. Bill Shorten is the man—as the royal commission into union corruption has found—who ripped off the lowest paid workers, cleaners, at Clean Event, in order to do a side deal to benefit his union. That is what he did before becoming a member of parliament. He is now the Leader of the Opposition. The evidence was that he ripped off the lowest paid workers in Australia. He is being put up by the Labor Party as their prime ministerial candidate—the man that they have put up as the one who should be the most important decision maker in this country. Of course, he is also the man who knifed not just one Prime Minister but two Prime Ministers, despite all the assurances that he was as loyal to each of those men and women all the way along.

So egregious were some of the decisions which the member for Maribyrnong, now the opposition leader, made when he was a union leader that the current union has overturned those decisions. They have quashed those decisions because they have had a look at them and said: 'No, these weren't right. They don't have any integrity.' This is the man that they have put up to be Prime Minister. I think the real character assessment comes from the man who was here just a moment ago. He sits on the frontbench of the Labor Party. The member for Corio, Richard Marles, said:

If you want to know how Bill has got to where he is now … if you had to identify one thing, I think it is that he has been prepared to make decisions and to do things that almost anyone else would not.

That was Richard Marles, the member for Corio, the shadow immigration spokesperson. That is his assessment of Bill Shorten, the person whom they have put up as their leader and their prime ministerial candidate. He is the man who will be willing to do things that almost no-one else would do. That is not a man with integrity. This is not a man who is deserving of being the Prime Minister. I will tell you this: the Labor Party has form in terms of putting people up for the highest office in the land who lack integrity—because it is not just Bill Shorten. Only a few short years ago, they also put up a man whose name they almost cannot speak anymore—Mark Latham—to be their prime ministerial candidate. He was also not a man with integrity. So they have form in this regard.

I move on now to the integrity of the party, because that is so important as well. Your party is important in the way that people get preselected and in the way that you get supported with your campaigns. If you are not careful, the political party can have enormous influence over members of parliament as well, even after they have been elected.

Indeed, the concern that we have with the Labor Party is that they are run by one particular interest group that really controls the decisions of the Labor Party, far too much, on a day-to-day basis, and this particular interest group is a small interest group in the scheme of Australia—it represents only 17 per cent of Australian workers and is known as the Australian union movement. More, actually, than just the union movement as a whole, it really is just the union bosses who now control so many of the decisions of the Labor Party and have such inordinate influence. We know that these union bosses have half the voting power at their party conferences. We know that they basically preselect their candidates, they fund their campaigns, they pretty much call the shots as to who is going to be their leader and who is going to be their Prime Minister, and increasingly they call the shots on policy. This is not a party with integrity where the members can independently make decisions based on their core values but one making decisions increasingly in the interests of a very narrow section of the Australian community—that being the union movement.

Do not just listen to me on this but listen to Martin Ferguson and perhaps even Bob Hawke. Martin Ferguson says that too many opposition MPs today 'wait for the phone call from the trade union heavies to tell them what to do'. He says that Shorten can't curb union influence because 'too many of the shadow ministry in the caucus are almost as if they are prisoners of the union movement'. This is Martin Ferguson—he used to sit on these front benches as a very senior member of the Hawke-Keating governments and was the president of the ACTU. He now says that the shadow ministers who sit right there on that front bench are prisoners of the union movement. That is not a party with integrity. That is not a party that can make decisions based on core values in the interests of the Australian people. That is a party that is captured by a small interested group, and they are making decisions on their behalf rather than on behalf of the citizens.

I am glad the member for Corio has entered the chamber, because I was just quoting him in terms of his character assessment of the Leader of the Opposition.

Finally, I have mentioned the integrity of individuals being so important. I have mentioned the integrity of the party being so important and how that is lacking in the Labor Party. Finally, if you do not stack up on those two things, you get poor decisions. You do not get integrity in your decisions. And that is what we have seen just so often over the last couple of years in the years of Labor in government. We have seen so many decisions which have been dominated by the union movement—campaigning against the China free trade agreement, for example. We have had the member for Ballarat make extraordinary decisions, where she has denied cash for cancer centres as funds have flowed to their marginal seats. They dismantled the ABCC while they were in power, despite it doing such a great job in terms of cleaning up union sites. We are proud to stand here as a party and as individuals with integrity, and proud to represent— (Time expired)

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