Sarah Henderson (Corangamite, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Through the recent royal commission we have learned of other terrible rip-offs. Let me stress again that these are coming from some of the most vulnerable and hardest-working workers in Australia. The litany of rip-offs, of fraud, of disgraceful corruption, which Labor was not prepared to stand up to, is really outrageous. We have had the Transport Workers Union officials who bought $150,000 American utes for their own use; the National Union of Workers officials who spent members' money on holidays, concert tickets and a dating website; CFMEU officials receiving kickbacks from underworld figures and raiding redundancy funds to pay workers unlawfully striking at a children's hospital; a deal between the Australian Workers' Union and the cleaning company, Cleanevent, where Cleanevent agreed to pay the union $25,000 per year for three years in return for the names of their workers and a deal that stripped the workers of their penalty rates—millions and millions of dollars that were rightfully owed to Cleanevent workers, who were robbed by this deal; the Australian Workers' Union practice of using false invoices to companies to cover union memberships of workers in order to boost the union's power within; and, when he was the AWU national secretary, Mr Shorten's union acceptance of a secret donation of $40,000 from a company to fund his campaign for parliament—a fact he only disclosed when he was about to be exposed by the royal commission. In every case it was honest workers who were the victims. Clearly the laws were inadequate, and action was required.

The action that we have taken in instituting this absolutely vital reform has been supported by many leading Labor figures. Former AWU secretary Paul Howes said:

I can't see any reason why anyone in the [union] movement would fear having the same penalties that apply to company directors. If you're a crook, you're a crook.

The former ACTU president, Martin Ferguson, said:

There is an absolute obligation on the union movement to clean up its house. There is an obligation on the unions to put their house in order.

Former ACTU secretary Bill Kelty said:

I was always on that side of the debate which said that unions are public bodies so they are accountable to members for their management…

The former ALP Attorney-General, Robert McClelland, said there is 'unquestionably a case for further legislative reform.' These are leading Labor figures—men and also women—who have spoken out in favour of these reforms, because they believe it is not right to tolerate fraud and corruption and dodgy deals by union bosses like those I have described today.

We are very proud that we have taken action. In this 45th Parliament—nor in the 44th Parliament—we are not seeing the Labor Party of old. We are not seeing the sort of action that Bob Hawke and Paul Keating were prepared to take to make sure that the Australian worker came first. This Labor Party is not putting the Australian worker first. Bill Shorten, in bed with the CFMEU, in receipt of $11 million of donations, has said that the unions come first—

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