Trent Zimmerman (North Sydney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Will the Prime Minister advise the House how the Registered Organisations Commission will crack down on union rorts and rip-offs and ensure that union bosses are acting in the interests of hard-working Australians.

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

Last night the Senate passed the registered organisations bill. What this meant was that for the first time trade union officials and, indeed, officials of employer organisations would be subject to the same standards of accountability to their members as company directors are to their shareholders. This was doing no more than applying the same standards of accountability that we expect of company directors. Now you would think that after Craig Thomson, after Kathy Jackson, after one scandal after another, that the Labor Party would have been lining up to support that legislation because they would have recognised that when so many rorts and frauds and malfeasance had been exposed, the best thing to do was to ensure that governance was improved. You would think that is what the Labor Party would have done, but what you saw was a very clear class war shown in this matter—and these were the classes at war. The Leader of the Opposition, a member of the union officials class, of the union bosses class, stuck to his own. He wanted to defend the bosses in the trade union movement. He wanted to stand up for them. And what we saw again was the coalition standing up for the more than two million members of registered organisations across Australia, demanding for them the accountability they are entitled to—

Ms Plibersek interjecting —

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Sydney is now warned.

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

just as we stood up for the owner-drivers who are being put out of business—35,000 of them—by legislation introduced by the Leader of the Opposition when he was in government, at the behest of the Transport Workers Union. That was its deliberate intent: to put hardworking Australian business men and women out of business. And, of course, after the parliament came back after the election, we were able to amend the Fair Work Act to protect 60,000 volunteer firefighters in Victoria who, again, a Labor government was seeking to subordinate to another militant union—in that case, the UFU. And, once again, we saw the Labor Party in this parliament and the Leader of the Opposition, a former union boss, standing up for his fellow union bosses. He has sold the members of trade unions down the river again and again. Whether it is at Chiquita Mushrooms or Cleanevent or here in this parliament, we are standing up for the members of the unions. We are ensuring they have accountable, honest processes in their unions managing their billions. Their billions of dollars managed by these organisations will, henceforth, be conducted transparently and with full accountability.