House debates

Thursday, 20 October 2016

Questions without Notice

Economy

3:06 pm

Photo of Malcolm TurnbullMalcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for his question, and thank him, too, and all my colleagues for their commitment to delivering our national economic plan. Just this week in the House, the House has passed the amendments to secure the reforms to the backpacker tax, and passed the reforms to ensure that Labor's gross mismanagement of vocational education will be brought to an end with a new scheme, saving billions of dollars.

We passed the two bills that were the triggers for the double dissolution election: the restoration of the Australian Building and Construction Commission, restoring the rule of law to the construction and building sector, and the registered organisations bill, which will ensure that the Kathy Jacksons, the Craig Thomsons and the Cesar Melhems—these people who have been ripping off their members for years and who have been ripping off some of the lowest paid workers in Australia—will have to face the same standards of accountability and transparency as company directors and be subject to the same penalties when they do the wrong thing. We have passed the legislation to deliver on our election commitment to have a plebiscite on the question of same-sex marriage and we passed it in plenty of time for the Senate to pass it to enable the vote to be held on 11 February.

In previous sitting weeks, we have defended the 60,000 volunteers of the Country Fire Authority of Victoria, whose dignity, whose independence and whose morale was being undermined and overtaken by that militant union, the UFU, which apparently has the Victorian Labor government completely in thrall. We passed the legislation through both houses to ensure that that takeover cannot be delivered by the Labor government.

Mr Champion interjecting

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