David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have received letters from the honourable member for Moreton and the honourable member for Lilley proposing that definite matters of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion today. As required by standing order 46(d) I have selected the matter which, in my opinion, is the most urgent and important; that is, that proposed by the honourable member for member for Moreton, namely:

The threat to Australian job security, lifestyle and values of radical trade union influence.

I call upon those members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.

More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

Gary Hardgrave (Moreton, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank members of the House for their support for this most important discussion that we need to have. Australians are fearful of the ‘no ticket, no start’ regime being offered by the Labor Party. Never before in the history of the Australian Labor Party has it been so heavily influenced by radical trade union elements. Those opposite have sat idly by while the Australian Council of Trade Unions has distributed to people around the country a device by which they mean to manipulate ordinary, everyday Australians—to put pressure on them, to telephone canvass them and to threaten to door knock them about how they intend to vote in the next federal election. They have sat idly by and allowed this to happen. And why wouldn’t they when 100 per cent of the members of the Australian Labor Party in this place are themselves trade union members? They represent an ever declining group of Australians—just 15 per cent—who by their own choice are members of trade unions, yet 100 per cent of the Labor caucus are trade union members.

Virtually 70 per cent—that is 27 out of 40, and I am counting people who are shadow parliamentary secretaries—of the Labor Party shadow ministry are former union officials. They come from an even smaller elite within Australian society. They have, in their arrogance, satisfied themselves that union leadership, union dominance and union control of the government are what everybody in Australia wants. I know—people in my electorate have told me this—how offended they are by the threat of a ‘no ticket, no start’ regime. That will mean that you will not be able to enter a workplace, as you can now, as a private contractor to do a painting job on a building site unless you are affiliated with a union. It will mean a return to all of the daft things of 20 years ago. The Prime Minister is here. He will remember the dim sim allowance. The workers all went out on strike while building the Darling Harbour project. We will return to the time when an enormous number of days were lost in strike action in the country. At present we are at the lowest level of strikes recorded since 1913. Strikes peaked in this country in December 1992 when 104.6 days were lost per thousand in all industries. There is no doubt in the minds of the majority of members in this place that this is a matter of absolute urgency and a matter of absolute public importance.

Fifty five per cent of those opposite are also former trade union officials. The unions themselves have donated $50 million to the Australian Labor Party in the last 11 years—and now it is call-up time; now it is time for a repayment on that investment. The unions have contributed the vast majority of the Leader of the Opposition’s $100 million election campaign war chest—$100 million has been taken from workers, forced from workers, to join a union—

Government Member:

Extorted!

Gary Hardgrave (Moreton, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I hear the word ‘extorted’. That may be a bit harsh but in some sectors it could be right because of the thuggish way in which some of these people operate. I am very indebted to the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations for the work that he has done in highlighting Dean ‘expletive’ Mighell—that radical, foulmouthed Victorian face of the Electrical Trades Union. We heard a tape of his address to members of his union where he boasted about coercing employers into pay rises. Maybe there is a sense of extortion. We have also heard his description of the Australian Building and Construction Commission—a commission which has got the builders of Australia working and the building projects of Australia delivered far faster, on time and more in line with expected costs, which is unlike the way it used to be. Robert Gottliebsen told the Australian on 10 July:

... in many cities union rorts and bad work practices were adding more than 40 per cent to the cost of commercial building.

That is the sort of unfair feather bedding to costs that you only ever see from people like the Queensland Department of Public Works. As a result, we have a very real threat to the lifestyle, job security and economic prosperity of this country.

Those opposite are very comforted by the fact that they will soon be joined by some of the acolytes of the trade union movement. I think it was the member for Blair who was correct in saying that more union bosses than ever before are set to enter the federal parliament at the next election through safe Labor seats or Senate spots. They have forced people out. They are going to join people like the member for Batman, the member for Throsby, who I see is here, and the member for Hotham, who are former leaders of the Australian Council of Trade Unions.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Bruce Scott interjecting

Gary Hardgrave (Moreton, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Maranoa suggests that some unfair dismissals have taken place, and I am sure the member for Charlton thinks that. Greg Combet, the man who says, ‘I think it would be a good idea if the unions were running Australia again,’ is the preselected Labor candidate forced onto the people of Charlton. The people who got in the way of Combet’s preselection are people like the former member for Charlton, Bob Brown. He had 48 years of membership in the Labor Party; 48 years of dedicated service to the people of the Hunter; 48 years of dedication rewarded recently with an Order of Australia, and the Labor Party said: ‘Get out of our way. We don’t want you anymore. How dare you question our radical ambition to further take control of the Australian parliament with union officials.’

Then we have the poor member for Maribyrnong, who has been an honest toiler—particularly on behalf of the Pacific nations—and has, in fact, stood for something when it comes to the Pacific nations in this place. He has been rolled out by the AWU’s national secretary, Bill Shorten. Dougie Cameron, the National Secretary of the AMWU—he has one of those accents that we get to caricature every so often, but being part Scottish I will defend him in that regard—is entering the New South Wales Senate. I have never heard of Don Farrell, but he is from the shoppies and is entering the South Australian Senate. Richard Marles is entering Corio. The poor member for Corio, who is the only farmer in the Labor Party, the only person who has actually been on the land, will be gone because it is far more convenient for the radical concept of more trade union control in this place to have the Assistant Secretary of the ACTU in that seat. And the ETU have dropped Kevin Harkins into Franklin and it is so bad that even the poor member for Franklin is campaigning against him. The Labor member for Franklin has said: ‘Hang on, this bloke isn’t from our community. He isn’t one of us. He’s nobody who has actually been part of the community. He has been thrown in on us from Victoria. He is an ETU, Dean Mighell acolyte.’ He is now in Franklin and the member for Franklin has walked away from him.

If you look at marginal seats around the country, you will see they cannot queue fast enough. They do not want local champions; they do not want people who have actually participated in their local communities. They want people who have survived the Tammany Hall pressure points, worked their way through the union system and created an environment where they have so much power and so much control that someone now wants to take care of it. The Peter principle is alive and well in the Labor Party—promote them out, stick them into the parliament and inflict them upon the people of Australia.

Worse still, the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Rudd, the member for Griffith, is on record as saying in his address at the National Press Club on 17 April this year that he is hoping to appoint these union bosses to his front bench once they enter parliament. He is hoping to ‘get them in’, as he said, and ‘get them in early’. I do not know how the shadow ministers opposite feel about the fact that they are about to be flicked. They are doing all the work, but Combet, Shorten and Cameron, plus Farrell, Marles and Harkins, are all going to take their places.

Then we get a little bit worse because we look at the craziness of Stephen Jones of the Community and Public Sector Union. Stephen Jones’s idea is that once the Labor Party is in government—and Australians are going to work hard to make sure that does not happen and so are we on this side—they want to have a greater say in policy direction under a Rudd government. The CPSU want to make it compulsory for Commonwealth public servants to join their union. As a result, the Left will get a greater level of affiliation fee paid into the Labor Party and they will be able to hand-pick the cabinets. I do not know who the right-wing members of the cabinet are, but what will happen is that the whole make-up of the caucus and the cabinet will change and they will be in control of the CPSU. That is his ambition. They have put it off, I think, until after the election but that is their radical thinking.

One thing is missing from all of this discussion. What is in this for the average Australian? What is the average Australian actually getting out of this? Are we seeing a boost to their job security? Are we seeing an opportunity for them to earn more money? Are we seeing an opportunity for them to participate more fully in the running of their country? A democracy is where the people are in charge. It amazes me to listen to speeches of members opposite when we talk about industrial relations matters—no doubt we will hear it again through the course of this MPI—that they always talk about the unions, the union bosses and the rights of the unions. They never actually stand up for the workers; they forget about the workers. One of the reasons for that—and I am happy to be proved wrong, because I am a very generous sort of person—is that not one member opposite, despite their membership of a trade union, despite the fact that they have been a trade union official, has ever actually worked on the tools. Where are the mechanics? Where are the plumbers? I see the member for Macarthur is here. We have a mechanic over here. We have a few other people with trade skills as well, but where are the tradies opposite?

My grandfather Perce was a member of the TWU until the day he died because he thought there was a funeral benefit in it. He voted for the coalition, though. The last job of my grandfather Alan McKinnon, my mother’s father, was doing pick and shovel work for the Gold Coast City Council. He lived in the member for Moncrieff’s area. I am saying that they were workers. One was a truck driver; one was a labourer. They told me that it was all about looking after the average person and making sure their aspirations were well met. That is what we stand for on this side. This side has delivered a 20 per cent improvement in the income stream of average Australians. On the other side, their track record in government saw a decline in the amount of money that people got to take home. That is the great shame of what the Labor Party of 2007 have become. They have become so manufactured by poll groups and by this narrow and ever-narrower gene pool of trade union membership, trade union officials—to be narrowed further at the next election—that they have forgotten about Australians. They have forgotten about workers. They have forgotten about the average person who has an ambition—an ambition to own a home, to grow a family and to do better than they did before.

My father was a metal machinist by trade. I do not want medals for making these comments; I simply make the point that I know where I came from. There are no silver spoons in my family. I deliberately chose the Liberal Party because the Liberal Party showed me very plainly that, if you are prepared to put the effort in, you can achieve. That has been the ambition of those on this side of the parliament ever since I walked in here on 30 April 1996. As a government, we have stood very firmly on the side of liberating the opportunities for individual people. On that side, they want to restrict them. They want to see a union ‘no ticket, no start’ approach. There is no sense of trust in the workplace. ‘The boss is going to do you over.’ ‘Everything you try and do, you will fail at.’ So the message is: ‘Don’t do anything. Victimhood is waiting for you around the corner.’

That is the mantra of the modern Labor Party today. They are living off the efforts of trade union officials of the past—people who actually stood for something 100 years ago, who stood for safe workplaces, who stood for better conditions and better terms, who stood for better opportunities for people. But the trade union movement of today stands for one thing: to filter as many people through its system as it can into places like this. Every parliament around Australia has trade union officials of some note promoted into it, circulating through it. That is the real reason why trade union officials appear.

I heard the health minister say today, with regard to Nepean Hospital, that there is a sense of using workers as pawns. I have to say, as the son of a metalworker, and as the grandson of a truck driver and a labourer, that it is a disgrace and it is disgusting that the Labor Party and the trade union movement have stooped as low as they have. The worst part is that after the next election, if those people that they want to draft into this place actually get up, things will only ever get worse. The people of Australia are not going to be fooled. That is why this matter is a matter of public importance today.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today, we have chosen to debate this topic as the matter of public importance rather than productivity and the economy, in spite of the fact that the government have said all week that they want a debate on the economy and on productivity. When the shadow Treasurer submitted an MPI for debate in this House, in order to have a proper debate between himself and the Treasurer, they cut and run. For the first time since 2005, they submitted an MPI and ensured that it was the matter that would be debated today.

Of course, we know that after they did that, they then proceeded to not actually debate the issue—to not debate the matter that is before the parliament today. And that is not surprising, given that today it was revealed, on the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald, exactly what sort of a campaign we are going to see on industrial relations in 2007.

We know that there is now going to be a BCA-ACCI campaign and that, specifically, the campaign director is the chief Liberal strategist, Mark Textor. The operations director is a former senior Liberal official, Mr Tony Barry, and the campaign committee includes former Liberal advisers Peter Anderson and Brett Hogan. Of course, we also know that Crosby Textor is run by the former Liberal Party director, Lynton Crosby. He is the person who is conducting the campaign.

Today, in parliament, we sought guarantees that this would not be a taxpayer funded through research campaign on behalf of the Liberal Party by the BCA and ACCI. Of course, we did not get any assurance of that.

Kym Richardson (Kingston, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I take a point of order. Could you bring the member back to relevance regarding the MPI.

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

MPIs are generally wide ranging. I am sure the member for Moreton was wide ranging. I call the member for Grayndler.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, they really do not want to have a debate on this. First of all, they choose their MPI over the issue of the economy and productivity, and next they try to gag the debate.

It is interesting that these people talk about campaigns and whether there is intimidation and what is appropriate or not. If you look at Crosby Textor, you do not actually have to look at what we say about them; have a look at what they say about themselves. I quote from their website:

Crosby|Textor then helps its clients to map values based communications strategies that are both rationally and emotionally relevant so as to be able to actually change behaviour.

I repeat: ‘so as to actually change behaviour’—to manipulate public opinion. And that is what they are using the tens of millions of dollars of publicly funded market research to do. Of course, there has been a terrific study of Mark Textor’s role in The Hollow Men: A Study in the Politics of Deception, by Nicky Hager, about the September 2005 New Zealand election. Textor’s role as a paid consultant to the New Zealand National Party is explored in the chapter titled ‘The Manipulators’. The New Zealand Nationals formally sought Crosby Textor’s assistance in October 2004. Lynton Crosby was in the UK—assisting the British Conservatives to lose again—so Textor took on the contract, signed in November 2004. Textor did not move to New Zealand but he travelled there regularly. He also provided telephone and written advice from Australia and was on the ground for the last two weeks of the campaign.

Textor advised the New Zealand Nationals to raise money for two campaigns in the event that the September 2005 election produced a tight result. He also recommended that they conduct benchmark research into New Zealand public beliefs. This was conducted by a Crosby Textor staffer. The research focused on embryonic perceptions about Labour that could be targeted by New Zealand Nationals in speeches, statements and campaign messages. This Crosby Textor research campaign method is described in the books as being ‘purely and openly about manipulation’.

Textor recommended that the New Zealand Nationals campaign on tax, welfare, education and immigration issues. The subsequent National Party campaign against ‘special interests’ is attributed to Textor’s influence. Textor’s techniques are described as follows:

The defining character of these techniques is that they attempt to get voters to act in ways that might not be in accord with their interests or even beliefs. The aim is not good policy, or leadership that unifies a country; the objective is manipulating enough voters, at the right time, so that their clients can achieve power.

And we know that in the past Textor was responsible for the disgraceful racist push-polling that occurred in the Northern Territory election. This is a man prepared to play the race politics card against Indigenous Australians in order to secure political advantage for the Liberal Party. It is no wonder that many businesses today are expressing a great deal of concern indeed about being associated with the campaign for which these people have been brought on board by the BCA and ACCI.

The matter of public importance today before the House speaks about threats and security. We heard talk about intimidation and who people associate with. We heard a lot about that. Coming from a Queenslander, that is pretty red hot. Coming from a Queensland Liberal Party member, particularly from the member for Moreton—but you could pick any one of them and there is a cloud over them—that is pretty red hot.

In the lead-up to the 2004 election the Prime Minister was the star attraction for a fundraising function to which a violent Brisbane pornographer, Scott Phillips, was invited. Phillips was facing charges at the time he attended the intimate fundraising function at a Queensland winery. The charges reportedly included torture and causing grievous bodily harm. Phillips is now in jail, having pleaded guilty to a range of violent crimes. He has been described by police as a ‘highly brazen, violent psychopath’—clearly not too brazen, too violent and too psychopathic to be invited to a Queensland Liberal Party fundraiser.

These people want to slur every decent trade union, every worker in this country, because of their illogical hatred of workers. In Hansard of 30 May, the member for Moreton said the following:

You do not hear anything from the members of the Australian Labor Party about workers. They don’t represent workers; they represent—I was going to say—

and he uses another seven-letter word beginning with W. That is how he described working people in this country. That is the member for Moreton’s track record when it comes to credibility.

It is not just the people they associate with; we also have extraordinary allegations of corrupt conduct, and investigations by the Federal Police. We have the member for Bonner paying back $24,000 but not saying how it was paid back or what for. We have no explanation to the parliament, no explanation of the role of the Prime Minister or of whether the money came from him or from donors. We have no explanation of that whatsoever. There is a cloud over all these Queenslanders, whether it is that example or whether it is the member for Ryan’s nine overseas trips in less than two years, funded by a slush fund, or whether it is the association with state campaigns that went on.

You would think that it could not get worse, but it may well, because coming to a parliament near you is the new candidate for Mitchell, and he is a beauty. He knocked off that hardworking member Alan Cadman, the current member for Mitchell. He’s got terrific form, this bloke. He has risen within the Liberal Party as the protege of David Clarke, the associate of Ljenko Urbancic and other fascist forces within the New South Wales Liberal Party. That is his association. This guy has not stopped at stacking out a local branch; he has stacked out an entire state branch. Now he has been rewarded with this preselection, which is quite extraordinary.

We hear a bit from the other side about loyalty. Well, the candidate that Alex Hawke beat in the preselection, David Elliott, was a staff member of the Prime Minister, the member for Bennelong, for four years. He was his campaign secretary in the 1990 and 1993 federal campaigns. He was the secretary of the Bennelong FEC of the Liberal Party for three years. And what reward does David Elliott, a decent Australian—even though I disagree with his politics—get? He gets run over the top of by Alex Hawke, this extremist who has been allowed to take the safest Liberal seat in New South Wales.

Once again, you do not have to ask us; ask John Brogden, who blamed Alex Hawke for the slurs and innuendos that led to his demise on a political level and, almost, on a tragically personal level. That was the Alex Hawke contribution to the New South Wales Liberal Party. Ask Nick Greiner; ask any of the others.

There is a fair bit of form with these people. On Lateline on 18 July 2006 there was a program about what these new Liberals coming in are like. It showed the Young Liberals at a conference, happy to be filmed chanting the following:

We’re racist, we’re sexist, we’re homophobic. We’re racist, we’re sexist, we’re homophobic.

And then singing:

Glory, glory, Liberal students, in history’s page let every stage—advance Australia fair …

Not only were they prepared to say all that; they were prepared to denigrate our national anthem—no respect whatsoever. When they were interviewed they said the following:

We will always rule, we will always be over everything.

That is the mentality that is coming through here. That is the mentality that has led the New South Wales Liberal Party to being the extremist rump that it is today. More and more, just as the state preselection saw the knocking-off of people like John Ryan and Patricia Forsythe, they are coming for anyone who is not right-wing enough for them. Think about that. Alan Cadman was knocked off because he was not right-wing enough for them. John Howard’s former staffer—

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member will refer to members by their title or by their seat.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

and former FEC secretary was knocked off because he, David Elliott, was not right-wing enough for them. I very much fear for the sort of nation that we would become if ever the divisive elements were to gain more influence in the parliaments as opposed to just their domination in the Liberal Party machines, because they are prepared to divide Australians. That is what their industrial relations attack is about; it is fundamentally about attacking those working Australians who can least afford to defend themselves. It is not, under Work Choices legislation, the big, powerful tradesmen and people with strong union backgrounds who will suffer the most; the casual employees who are not unionised, women, particularly older women in the workplace, and people in small workplaces in our regional towns will suffer. This government is prepared to pass legislation to drag down the wages and conditions of those people and to transfer profits from workers to employers. Labor believes in uniting the nation. That is why we believe there needs to be a fair balance in industrial relations. That is why we believe there is a need to return to the social justice principles that have made this nation the greatest nation on earth, and we do not want Australia to be dragged down by the Alex Hawkes of this world. (Time expired)

Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Grayndler protested a little while ago about an MPI being granted to the back bench of the government. If you ever wanted a good reason why that should happen more often, just listen to his speech. It took him until the last minute to say anything about the subject, namely:

The threat to Australia’s job security, lifestyle and values of radical trade union influence.

I sat throughout the whole 15 minutes waiting for him to say that the Skilled Engineering run-through never happened, or to condemn it. When a group of women working in a workplace of which the trade union movement—Mr Johnson and Mr Mighell—did not approve, they kicked the door in and sprayed a pregnant worker with a fire extinguisher. When one of them was caught and identified—they all had disguises on—did that person rat on the other five or six? No. That is radical trade unionism, and this parliament should be debating it. Maybe before this debate is over we will hear something about those matters from the opposition in this place.

By coincidence on 26 February 1981 my maiden speech to this House was on industrial relations. I chose to select a quote from a left-wing academic, a fellow called Paul Johnson, who had written prior to that time an article called ‘Trade unionism is killing socialism: the English experience’. In part, he said:

Above all, the economic organisation of society, the way in which wealth is invested, and rewards distributed, to all of us who are its members, should have become the function of democratic governments.

But this is not what has happened. The unions have refused to recognise the limits of their historical role. They have not only rejected the idea of a progressive abdication, and the shift of their social and economic function to the political process, but they have flatly declined to allow the smallest diminution of their power to press the sectional interests they represent.

Indeed they have steadily, ruthlessly and indiscriminately sought to increase that power. In recent years, and in particular in the last five years, they have exhausted or beaten down any opposition and have finally succeeded in making themselves the arbiters of the British economy. This has not come about as part of some deeply laid and carefully considered plan. It is not part of a plan at all.

It has been, essentially, a series of accidents. Huge unions each pursuing wage claims at any cost—

and most of the cost is to the worker—

having successfully smashed other elements in the State—governments, political parties, private industry, nationalised boards—now find themselves amid the wreckage of a deserted battlefield. The undoubted victors.

They did not plan the victory—they do not know what to do with it now they have got it. Dazed and bewildered they are like medieval peasants who have burnt down the lord’s manor.

He stated further:

What next? They have no idea as they did not think ahead to this sort of situation, and indeed are not equipped by function or experience to embark on positive and constructive thinking. That is not their job! Here we come to the heart of the matter. The trade union is a product of 19th century capitalism. It is part of that system. Against powerful, highly-organised and ruthless capitalist forces, it had an essential even noble part to play. But when those forces are disarmed, when they are in headlong retreat—indeed howling for mercy—the union has no function to perform.

They are not my words; they are the words of a well-known and respected left-wing academic. This is what this election is about: reinstating the power of a mob of troglodytes who have been, through the proper legislative process, disarmed by this government to the benefit of workers.

In 1945, a worker could keep his wife and family on £6 a week. They were the ones who demanded more and more cash. The comparative figure today is $1,000 a week. They have done such a good turn for the workers that one family income of $1,000 a week is no longer enough. That is what the productivity argument is about. For about 13 years of the Hawke government and the accord, wages went up in large amounts, and at the end of 13 years buying power was less than when the Hawke government got elected. By trying to keep a lid on wages and trying to ensure that people are properly rewarded for their productivity, this government has delivered a 20 per cent increase in buying power. We have ads on television—and photographs, as the member for Moreton said—of the Leader of the Opposition in a bright shiny new welding helmet. I can tell you that if I have a welding helmet on, I have a MIG welding torch in my hand, because I can use it. The reality is that in this regard the Australian people are supposed to think that there is going to be a new era. ‘Trust me,’ says the Leader of the Opposition. That is the real issue.

There was a pretty interesting experience in Western Australia. I went to the north of Western Australia—close to the Pilbara—back in 1958. I saw the initial development. Because it developed under total trade unionism, every so often there would be a sudden rush of cars coming down south through Carnarvon. The question was asked: ‘What are you doing, fellas?’ The answer was: ‘The union has called a strike over the colour of the tablecloths in the mess hut and we’re going to be out for six weeks. We’re going to Perth.’ While they were out for six weeks, no ships were loaded. What did our customers—the suppliers of those jobs—the Japanese, do? They went to Brazil and they said to Brazil, ‘You’d better open up some of your iron ore mines, because we want someone we can trust.’ All the confidence up there was lost. What else went on? You did not have one driver for a bulldozer on every shift; you had two. You could not sit them both in the seat, so you had an air-conditioned shed in which all the extra blokes could play cards. If you happened to be a train driver and you took the train out to the mine site on a day trip you got a crib. There is nothing wrong with that—except that it had to include half a side of lamb. And you know where that went: straight into the family freezer when mum cut the sandwiches for the driver. That is what it was like up there, and the big investors were travelling the world trying to find other places to invest their money.

It was the Court government that brought in the first AWAs. All those fake jobs disappeared and the wages of the other blokes who stayed to drive the machinery went up $20,000 a year. They got the money—the extra $20,000 a year—and other people got real jobs. The profits of the owners—those ‘terrible people’, as they were referred to by the member for Grayndler—go into the superannuation of other Australians. That is where their profits go. You would think that they spend it all on yacht trips round the Isle of Capri the way the Labor Party carries on. But the fact of life is that when they got confidence through the Court government they started investing. When all of a sudden the minerals boom came along, the Pilbara was ready. The coal industries of the east coast were not ready.

The Gallup government came in. They were going to knock all that out. It is pity that I have not got time to read all the quotes that I have here about what happened in Western Australia the minute the Gallup government took over—no ticket, no start; the lot. But Gallup started to worry about Western Australia—as the present Premier is—and he decided that he would not change the rules that the Court government had put in. He did a Tony Blair. What happened then? The unions withdrew all their money. That is published in the West Australian. They stopped paying affiliation fees and the Gallup government rolled over. That is the future in this parliament if some time in the future the Labor Party become the government and are put under financial pressure. Where else do they get the money? If they get put under financial pressure, they will do as they are told. When they are told by Kevin Reynolds to jump, they will say, ‘How high?’

Bob McMullan (Fraser, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Federal/State Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is very unusual that we get a government backbench MPI being put forward. It is several years since it has happened. It was extraordinary what happened in the circumstances. The Treasurer had the opportunity—which he claims to always want—to come in here and have a debate about the economy. But the government decided that that was not what they wanted. They squibbed it and pretended that they wanted to talk about industrial relations. Nobody believes that they are serious; we knew all along that they were not serious about that and that it must be a diversion from something else—and I will come to that in a moment—because if they were serious they would not have given the job to the member for Moreton. What is crystal clear is that if they had been really serious they would not have given the support role to the member for O’Connor. No government that was seriously trying to mount a substantial alternative argument would use either of those people, let alone back in the quinella.

This is an attempt to distract attention from the controversy surrounding the apparent Liberal Party takeover of the Business Council of Australia and Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry campaign. As I have said on several occasions today, nobody should have any problem with a business organisation choosing to run a campaign during the run-up to an election. We live in a democracy and they are entitled to do that. What we should start to worry about is when we find it being taken over as a de facto Liberal Party campaign, and we know that a number of businesspeople are really concerned about that. I know that a lot of Australians would be concerned if they discovered that to be the case. Reported in the Sydney Morning Herald was the so-called secret plot to wreck the Labor Party, which is:

... alarming some business leaders who fear it will be overtly political.

…            …            …

One concerned business figure, believed to have been approached for support, said it read more like a Liberal Party strategy than a business campaign …

And why wouldn’t it? Look at who has written it. It has been written by all the senior operatives of the Liberal Party. It has been written by Mark Textor, Lynton Crosby and others with impeccable Liberal Party credentials.

We have even had alternative propositions, different strategies, being floated which propose running the business advertisements during the election campaign—and I quote again from the Sydney Morning Herald:

… it recommends keeping the identities of business figures involved secret.

So this is a very serious problem, and we found in question time today those same old tricky answers that we get every time we ask questions of this government about issues until they start to slowly unfold and the facts start to come out. We get people saying, ‘As I am advised,’ and ‘I did not authorise,’ and a tricky phrase: ‘I did not hand over the research,’ which does not actually mean, ‘I did not tell anybody what was in it.’ It just means, ‘I did not give them a copy.’

We are asked to believe that the senior operatives of the Liberal Party have been chosen to run a $6 million-plus advertising campaign for the business community—about which business people are complaining that it looks more like a Liberal Party campaign than a business campaign—but that they do not have a clue about what is in government funded research, even though they are also doing research simultaneously for the Liberal Party. This is the poorest chinese wall in the world, and nobody can believe it to be true for one moment.

The confidential minutes of the 6 June planning meeting for this business campaign, some of which have already been reported in the newspapers today, show that the much-vaunted business campaign that the Prime Minister has been exhorting people to do for some time will be run by Crosby Textor, the firm that works extensively for the Liberals. The file note that went to the meeting stated: ‘The group agreed to appoint Crosby Textor to project manage the campaign. This has been confirmed with Mark Textor.’ So said the file note, but when Mr Textor was approached, he said that they had not been appointed and there had been no confirmed arrangement.

The person who wrote the secret file note for the BCA and the ACCI must have been hallucinating, because they said that this has been confirmed with Mark Textor. Mr Textor did present—surprise, surprise—focus group work for the people planning this business campaign, talking about the ‘emotional perspective’. This is not the sort of background material you would expect, and that business people are entitled to expect, for a campaign in which they are trying to run an alternative factual argument.

Of course, I will not agree with them, because they are putting forward a policy position I do not share. But lots of people run ads on television about things I do not agree with, political and otherwise. That is a perfectly reasonable thing. Who is to complain? But the reports that are becoming clearer and clearer show that, in effect, the campaign is being run by the Liberal Party. We have a question here of how many degrees of separation there are between the government on the one hand and this business campaign on the other.

Nobody will be reassured by the answers we heard in the House today that there is a legitimate degree of separation between the people running the business campaign, the Liberal Party and the government funded research. Those three things are in lock step. It will be of no surprise to anyone if they all wind up saying the same thing. We know that there is a plan for further government advertising on industrial relations—what used to be called Work Choices until some of the polling showed that it was not allowed to be called Work Choices. It might be the same research that we are talking about.

Nobody will be reassured and nobody will be surprised if there is significant harmony between this business campaign and the campaign run by the government with taxpayers’ money. The concern is that last point about taxpayers’ money. If the Liberal Party wants to pay for research and give it to somebody else, that is fine. It may or may or not be an intelligent thing to do, but that is none of my business and it is none of the parliament’s business. But the Liberal Party, more and more, finds it impossible to tell the difference between taxpayers’ money and the Liberal Party’s money and between taxpayer owned assets and Liberal Party assets—for example, thinking, ‘Kirribilli House is my house,’ and that taxpayers’ money is legitimately entitled to be used for research which has no public policy purpose but simply a party political purpose.

Any reasonable set of ministerial standards says that you should not use public resources for party political purposes or private purposes, including that which used, laughingly, to be called the minsterial code of conduct of this government but which turned out to be produced by The Chaserwe thought it was serious, but it was actually Charles Firth who wrote it! He is still running around trying to find a minister to abide by it. He has been going for 11 years and he has not found anybody yet. What do you reckon his chances are? They are not good.

The use of public resources for private purposes is a different matter; that is corruption. We are talking here about the misuse of public resources, firstly, to help the Liberal Party and now, indirectly, to feed in through those Liberal Party operatives to this business campaign. We are finding more and more that there is this stench. When governments have been in power for a long time, they start to get around them a sense of entitlement, a sense that the resources that are provided by the taxpayer are provided to them.

We find it extraordinary that we continue to have these allegations without disclosed investigation of the three Queensland Liberal MPs for allegedly using their taxpayer funded allowances to prop up the party’s state election campaign. There was a story today about one of them paying some money back. I do not think I will have time to refer to that, but we did have one Liberal MP criticising the police for taking too long to conclude an investigation into those backbenchers. It is in startling contrast to the period it took the Australian Electoral Commision to investigate the Prime Minister’s activities. This government has lost its sense of proportion. It cannot distinguish between taxpayers’ money and its money, between its public responsibility and its private interest. It is time for a government with that incapacity to distinguish to go.

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That contribution was not surprising, because the member for Fraser rarely knows what the question before the chair is, and he certainly was not speaking to the question before the chair. There is no doubt what the question is about. This is about union thuggery. This is about workers’ rights. This is about the fact that unions will impose their will upon the workers in Australia. This is about the fact that we could have the possibility of wall-to-wall union governments in Australia. That is what the argument is about at the present time. Members opposite do not want to talk about that. We have not heard a word about trying to defend those particular positions, because they cannot. I come from a position where I used to be a rank-and-file unionist, and I know what goes on in union meetings. I have met people like the member for Gorton, who is at the table. I have met people like him—the enforcers. If you have a look across the chamber at some of these people, you might have met them in the workplace somewhere, or on the work site. Can you just imagine meeting the member for Lalor on the work site? What a fearsome sight that would be!

What these people do is that they walk into the workplace and they enforce their will. They do not ask the workers. They do not ask the people on the site what they want. These union thugs come in and enforce their will in the workplace. I have been there and seen it. They lord it over not just the workers but also the bosses. I came into the New South Wales parliament at a time when we had the green bans. Remember the green bans? The member for Brisbane was probably mixed up in them at the time, getting some of the kickbacks. I can tell you—

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—Ha!

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Funny, isn’t it, how some of these union bosses ended up with units in the development block—quite funny.

Arch Bevis (Brisbane, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Homeland Security) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I would ask the member to withdraw the assertion that I took kickbacks. I am quite happy to have banter across the chamber, but that is a serious allegation which I do take offence at.

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I withdraw, but that certainly brought them out of the burrow.

Arch Bevis (Brisbane, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Homeland Security) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker—

Phillip Barresi (Deakin, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is withdrawn, member for Brisbane.

Arch Bevis (Brisbane, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Homeland Security) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, with due respect, the microphone was not on. I did not actually hear what he said before the microphone came on. Certainly once the microphone was on, he was not saying, ‘I withdraw.’

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Page did indicate he was going to withdraw.

The member for Brisbane is trying to waste time, because he knows that what I am saying is right. He knows what I am saying is right, because I have been there. Swimming pools suddenly appear upon the scene—the union bosses get swimming pools! That is what it is about. I am not opposed to unions; I have made this clear in this parliament. I am not opposed to unions. Unions should be voluntarily joined, and there should be secret ballots in the workplace. If you had that, you would have decent unions. That is the only way to operate unions. But these people opposite, who have been the beneficiaries of this, are certainly not in favour of that.

We have one of the thugs in my electorate—David Lyons. Mr Lyons turned up at a workplace on a Monday morning and took all the people out. When the boss asked, ‘What’s this about?’ he said, ‘I had a bad weekend.’ That was the only reason he could give the boss for taking the workforce out: ‘I had a bad weekend.’ That is what this is about. It is about the fact that we are going to get this right across Australia. We are going to have unfettered unions. We are going to have unions walking into the workplace on all sorts of excuses. We have it in New South Wales. It is like the Treasurer says: ‘Don’t look at what they say; have a look at what they do.’ Have a look at New South Wales, because there is legislation in New South Wales that, under the guise of occupational health and safety, the unions can just walk in and they can enforce all sorts of constraints upon the boss. Not only that, they can then do inspections. And guess what? They say, ‘Oh, look, there is a charge for that. You’ll have to pay, because we are here to inspect.’ That is the type of thing you get.

We even have legislation in New South Wales which says that if the unions take someone to court and get a settlement, they get part of the settlement. That is the legislation. They get part of the settlement. That is the type of government you get from the unions, and if you get it wall-to-wall across Australia, heaven help Australia. The member for Richmond, who was in here a while ago, is advocating that small businesses in Richmond will have to be unionised. People will be forced into unions and will have to pay up to $500 a year in union fees. And then, would you believe, those businesses go broke, don’t they? (Time expired)

Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Industrial Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There were three government contributors to the MPI debate, and not one of them mentioned Work Choices. This is a debate about industrial relations. The member for Moreton was entitled to debate industrial relations in this country but did we hear, at even one point during his contribution, the words ‘Work Choices’? Did we hear even one government member defend Work Choices legislation and the provisions therein? Of course we did not. We understand that government members support Work Choices. They voted for Work Choices, but their polling tells them that Work Choices is poison, so they no longer mention it at all. They no longer mention Work Choices because they know it is political poison. So what they are going to do, between now and the next election, is pretend that they have amended it fundamentally. They are going to try to convince the Australian public—spending taxpayers’ money to do it—that Work Choices legislation has now been fixed and that it is now okay for hardworking Australians.

But the reality is this: Work Choices has not been fundamentally altered whatsoever. We know it has not, because of Senator Minchin’s comments only this year that the government want to make it worse for workers if they are re-elected. We know, and most of the public are beginning to understand, that this Prime Minister has had an obsession with destroying unions for 30 years and, worse than that, hurting hardworking Australian families. That is what Work Choices is about. When the Prime Minister found himself with a majority in both houses of parliament, upon the election of the Howard government in 2004, he decided—even though the policies announced during the 2004 election campaign made no mention of the provisions of Work Choices—to ram Work Choices legislation through the parliament and down the throats of every hardworking Australian. That is what has happened in this parliamentary term, and what has happened since is that there has been polling to show that working Australians believe in a fair go.

It was Labor, not John Howard when he was Treasurer in the eighties, that decentralised the wage-fixing system and introduced enterprise bargaining. It was Labor that changed the economy fundamentally. The reforms that were made to our economy were made by Labor governments. Changes to the industrial relations system were in fact introduced by a Labor government, as was enterprise bargaining and the removal from central wage fixing to bargaining at the workplace level. The difference between Labor and this Howard government is that Labor introduced these reforms without throwing fairness out the back door. That is the fundamental difference. We made sure there was protection for ordinary working Australians so that their penalty rates would not be stripped away and their overtime would not be removed without compensation.

In the last few weeks, the government have tried to convince the Australian people that they have introduced an amendment to the act that will somehow mitigate the adverse effects of the legislation. That is of course not the case. The holes in the legislation that was put to this House only some weeks ago are so big that you could drive trucks through them. The Australian people, the workforce of this country, have had 18 months of Work Choices and now they are going to get 18 weeks of a so-called fairness test—and if the government are re-elected they will reintroduce ‘Work Choices Plus’. They will remove the entitlements from all hardworking Australians. They will continue to strip away the conditions of employment and, if they can destroy unions, they will make it even harder on hardworking Australians.

I am not going to pretend that unions always do everything well. There are occasions when unions do not work well and occasions when they do the wrong thing. No-one in this world is perfect. But in a decent and democratic country, employee organisations are vital. What is the alternative? The Soviet Union? What do you want? Do you want a country without a trade union movement? It is an absolute disgrace. (Time expired)

Phillip Barresi (Deakin, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The time allotted for this discussion has now expired.