Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Those on the other side are a bunch of bad sports. Somebody just interjected about the royal commission—an $80 million witch-hunt that had no recommendations that would be enacted with ABCC legislation or with the registered organisations legislation. That expensive witch-hunt and waste of time was a show trial, which pulled up previous Labor leaders, which pulled up current Labor leaders, and which did not recommend one criminal charge, because it did not have the capacity to do so. I acknowledge that there have been people in the union movement who have done the wrong thing—one or two bad people. Those people have faced the Fair Work Act and they have faced criminal charges.

Mr Nikolic interjecting—

This is also a Liberal Party that will deny the fact that they have a few bad eggs in their movement. They are everywhere. Just as you throw at us the issues with Craig Thomson, we throw at you the issues with the Victorian Liberal Party and the fact that this week one of their own is pleading guilty to embezzling $1.5 million of Liberal Party funds.

There are bad people in every movement. They should face the full force of the law. But what this government has tried to do, through this parliament, through a royal commission and through the court system, is blame an entire movement. What we are seeing now, in quite possibly the last days of this government—

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