Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection. Will the minister update the House on actions the government has taken to protect hardworking Australian families from criminal gangs? Is the minister aware of any alternative approach?

Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Minister for Immigration and Border Protection) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for her question. The government has increased the number of visa cancellations quite dramatically over the course of the last two years. We have increased the number of visa cancellations of noncitizens who are committing crimes in our country against Australian citizens. The number is up by some 1,200 per cent. We have concentrated on outlaw motorcycle gangs. There are now 138 outlaw motorcycle gang chiefs and leaders who we will have cancelled the visas of, and we have made our country a safer place as a result.

These people have been involved in drug running and extortion, and there is a bit of an overlap, because some of them have involvement in the CFMEU. We know that the links between the Labor Party and the CFMEU run pretty deep, but the Leader of the Opposition heard recently that, even as of last week, the CFMEU had 56 matters currently before the courts, and there are 110 CFMEU representatives before the courts, facing a total of 1,076 suspected contraventions. When the Leader of the Opposition was asked about that: nothing to see here. He has never heard of crimes being committed by bikies or by CFMEU members.

Of course, he also has a very patchy memory of his past behaviour, it has to be said, too, because he set up the Fair Work Commission and appointed Labor affiliates to positions within the Fair Work Commission, and when he referred the inquiry about Sunday pay rates to the Fair Work Commission he was envisaging that Sunday pay rates would be cut—because when he was a union leader that is exactly what he sanctioned in the EBAs that his union presided over. Now, he wants you to believe something different, but I always say about this Leader of the Opposition: look not at what he says; always look at what he does, because this bloke is not straight up and down, and the Australian public have got it worked out.

The CFMEU repaid a bit of a favour to the Labor Party last week, because there was a protest in Brisbane where the bikies were marching against the Fair Work Commission decision. The bikies do not have a great attention span, as it turns out. I read in The Courier Mail that they walked off the job. Do you know where they went? They went to the Grosvenor strip club in the Brisbane CBD. They put down their bikes—pushbikes in this instance, it looks by the photo in The Courier Mailand the CFMEU flags, and the police were called, because, quickly, fights broke out between the CFMEU members who were not on task but were in the strip club on union dime.

What we know is that there is a lot of irony here, because, whilst the CFMEU workers were in Brisbane ripping off their gear, in Canberra they have a union leader in the Leader of the Opposition who is ripping off workers. (Time expired)