Ian Goodenough (Moore, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Defence Industry representing the Minister for Employment. Will the minister outline to the House this government's commitment to ensure that employer and employee organisations always act in the best interests of their members, particularly in light of their connection to other registered organisations?

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Moore for his question. He, like me and everyone else on this side of the House, supports honest unions and we support honest union leaders, and we want to make sure that, through the Registered Organisations Commission, they remain an important part of the system. What the Registered Organisations Commission bill will do is remove from the system dishonest union leaders and rogue unions that are causing the kind of trouble that hurts honest union leaders and, of course, through them hurts the workers that they are supposed to represent. That is why I cannot for the life of me work out why the Leader of the Opposition and the Labor Party oppose honest unions and honest union leaders, because you would think, with the Labor Party's links to the union movement, they would want to have honest union leaders and honest unions as part of their organisation.

It was Mark Latham who wrote some years ago, in 2012, that each of the health service unions' troubles can be traced back to the 'corrosive impact of Labor factional politics', and the reverse argument is also true. We are seeing that corrosive impact of factional civil war in the ALP happening right now. Right now it is on display in Victoria. The Leader of the Opposition has shoehorned his friend Kimberley Kitching into the Senate vacancy created by Senator Conroy. This has been done against the wishes of both his factional allies and factional adversaries alike. Even the member for Grayndler has refused to endorse the choice of Kimberley Kitching for the Senate. He said, when asked about it this week, that he had never heard of this woman—never heard of her. He did not know who she was. He did not know all the candidates. He could not possibly comment. Everyone knows not a leaf falls in the Labor Party forest without the member for Grayndler knowing it. He is burying his head in his paper—no, he has looked up now. The truth is: the member for Grayndler knows everything that is going on in the Labor Party across the country. He knows all about Kimberley Kitching, but he was not prepared to back her in, because he knows that the war in the Victorian Labor Party is out of control.

We have Senator Gavin Marshall, on the left, attacking, with a political hatchet, his colleagues this week, targeting the member for Scullin, saying he is going to take his preselection away. He was attacking the member for Ballarat and, amazingly, of all things, attacking the revered and venerable member for Jagajaga—loved on all sides of the House, but not by Senator Gavin Marshall. So we are trying to help the Leader of the Opposition. We are trying to help him with the Registered Organisations Commission bill. We are trying to clean up the unions for him, because we know their inextricable links to the Labor Party, and yet he will not help himself. (Time expired)