Keith Wolahan (Menzies, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm grateful to come after the member for Parramatta, who gave us a lecture on being serious. My good friend quoted Monsieur Renault from Casablanca, a great movie, but I'd like to quote John McEnroe, another famous person: 'You can't be serious. You cannot be serious.' To accept the premise as put by the member for Parramatta, Nick McKenzie wasted his time. There was nothing to report. The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald wasted their time putting all of those stories on the front page. In fact, this entire bill that we saw come back down to this House was a waste of time because there's nothing to see here. The entire reason for the CFMEU existing is a waste of time. The fact that you go to all of the large construction projects throughout this country, particularly in the state of Victoria, and they have tagged those projects like a teenager tags graffiti, they have put their flags there—not the Australian flag, their flag—and they have done so because they are rubbing it in everyone's faces. They are rubbing it in your face, but that side of politics is denying it. You cannot be serious.

There is nothing more serious than the cost of housing, because, next to the day-to-day costs that people are paying to hold themselves together, the topic of housing is a serious, first-order issue for dining tables throughout this country. They are looking to this parliament to do better. So, when we put this matter of public importance together, we do it very seriously because it is a serious topic. When you address an issue, you can address it either based on a position of principle or from a position of power. The test is, if you change the characters or the labels, what would you do? So I ask the member for Parramatta this question: Suppose it were not the CFMEU but the IPA, the Institute of Public Affairs. Suppose it were not John Setka but John Roskam. Imagine a picture of John Roskam with a tattoo around his neck that says, 'God forgives; the IPA doesn't.' Imagine an institution that requires membership on big projects, that donates only to this side of politics, that demands extra staff with right of entry and that has a premium—and, yes, it is a 30 per cent premium, because, again, the CFMEU are not doing their job if they're not achieving that for their members. That's why they get elected. That's why they exist. Imagine if, in big construction projects, there were no ticket and no right of entry unless you were a member of the IPA. Imagine if the IPA had extra positions, the holders of which could walk into any worksite and demand to see the books. Imagine if, in return for legislation and removing a watchdog that had oversight of the IPA, this side of politics saw extra donations from them. Imagine—we've seen this movie play out many times before—if a new government came in and said, 'We must do something about the IPA's influence in big construction,' so it created a watchdog, and that watchdog saw 1,661 contraventions over 91 cases. Then, when the party that receives those donations comes back and removes that watchdog, we say, 'Well, it's politicised.'

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