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

For years, as the Heydon royal commission demonstrated, Australia's big unions have been selling their members out by trading away members' entitlements in industrial agreements, and, at the same time, taking money from employers, which they did not disclose to their members and which had no bona fide basis whatsoever. The evidence is extensive. We have heard about the Clean Event payment, which I spoke about a moment ago, where penalty rates for some of Australia's lowest-paid workers were traded away in return for cash payments to the union, and the royal commission's conclusion was that the only beneficiaries of that deal were the AWU and Clean Event. Who lost out? The members. We are standing up for the members, so what we are doing is introducing on legislation on Wednesday that will criminalise secret payments between employers and unions that could have a corrupting influence. In addition, what we also will do is criminalise payments between employers and unions that do not have a legitimate basis, like so many of the payments exposed in the Heydon royal commission.

What about the payment by ACI Operations to the AWU in Victoria? They paid them around $500,000 while workers were laid off at the Spotswood glass manufacturing plant. The AWU invoiced the payments as 'paid education leave'. But what were the payments used for? To offset a loan to renovate the union's Victorian office, and four other general costs. That is the finding of the royal commission. There are so many others like that. If the member for Isaacs and indeed the Leader of the Opposition himself are proud of their record in representing workers, why weren't the workers told? Why were so many of these payments hidden? Why were they concealed from the members whom they claim to represent?

The third part of the bill that will be introduced on Wednesday will require both employers and the union to make public, to disclose, any payments that flow from the employer to the union at the time of an enterprise agreement. In the Heydon royal commission we have seen only the tip of the iceberg. There is a culture of deceit, a culture of selling out the workers, a culture of trading away workers' rights in return for membership lists and in return for cash, and we are going to put a stop to it with the legislation we are introducing in the House this week.

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