David Coleman (Banks, 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 explain why it is critical to maintain a consistent approach to occupational health and safety in the workplace and how that will be assisted by the establishment of the Registered Organisations Commission and the Australian Building and Construction Commission?

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

I thank the member for Banks for his question. It is a very important question because occupational health and safety—a safe workplace—is the most important priority in every single workplace in Australia for employers and, equally, employees. The first task of every business is to ensure that their employees are in a safe workplace, and it is one of the most important requirements of unions, of course, to represent their members to ensure that they are in safe workplaces. That, of course, is the reason why the Labor Party should support the Registered Organisations Commission being established, which they have tried to oppose and failed this week, which is why it is an important signature reform. It is why they should support the Australian Building and Construction Commission—because healthy unions are good for their members. Honest union leaders looking after their members rather than lining their pockets should be the outcome that every member in this House should be seeking.

So I find very strange indeed the hypocrisy—the hideous hypocrisy—that members of the Labor Party, and particularly this Leader of the Opposition, show in their feigned concern about safety in the workplace for workers, when in fact the Leader of the Opposition deliberately parachuted into the Senate Kimberley Kitching to become Senator Kitching, who is alleged to have fraudulently filled out the safety tests for six union leaders in the Health Services Union. So they had a captain's pick where the Leader of the Opposition put Kimberley Kitching, Senator Kitching, into the Senate when the trade union royal commission has referred her to the Commonwealth DPP for fraudulently, it is alleged, filling out the safety tests for six union leaders from the Health Services Union and bragging about it. That put union leaders into workplaces, pretending that they had done the safety tests and safety standards that were necessary to go into those worksites but knowing that they did not have those safety standards that are required.

That reckless decision by the Leader of the Opposition was made over the complaints and the outrage of many members of his frontbench, particularly the member for Isaacs. The member for Isaacs, as I understand it, threatened to resign if Kimberley Kitching was appointed to the Senate. If that is not true, he is quite welcome to say that he was misrepresented and explain the facts, because that is the very strong story that is circulating. Over the objections of former Senator Conroy and the objections of members of the right-wing faction from his own state, he put into the Senate a person who had fraudulently filled out the tests, it is alleged, of union leaders, putting workers in danger in the workplace. That is the real respect they have for workers' safety. (Time expired)