John McVeigh (Groom, 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 why it is important for employer and employee organisations to act in a way that promotes truthfulness, integrity and manages the potential for conflict of interest? Is the minister aware of any alternative approaches?

Mr Bowen interjecting—

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

The member for McMahon is warned. I haven't ejected anyone under 94(a) yet, but I sense I'm getting very close. The minister has the call.

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

I thank the member for Groom for his question. I hear the members of the Labor Party cat-calling about the head of the ABCC, but I didn't hear them saying that John Setka should resign or be sacked for the terrible things that John Setka did—or any of the others. So they stand up for John Setka while they criticise Nigel Hadgkiss. Doesn't that just sum up the Labor Party of today? It absolutely sums up the modern Labor Party. They want John Setka, one of the worst people in the union movement, to have a place at the cabinet table but they criticise former public servants.

The member for Groom asked me about the importance of managing conflicts of interest. It occurred to me that there's quite a number of these issues the Leader of the Opposition is yet to answer and I thought I might outline a few of those conflicts of interest to the House. He's yet to answer, for example, if he declared his conflict of interest when he was the secretary of the AWU and whether he was on the board of GetUp! when he gave $100,000 to the GetUp! organisation as a start-up loan. In fact, he's yet to say whether he declared a conflict of interest when he was on the board of Australian Super and they donated to the Australian Workers' Union or when, not long after, the Australian Workers' Union employed a full-time employee to work on the Maribyrnong campaign when he was the candidate there for the Labor Party. There are two, so far.

More recently, of course, we have been asking in this House for him to explain why IUS Holdings paid $560,000 to the AWU at the same time his union was negotiating 28 EBAs with businesses where IUS Holdings was the required income protection business. And he still hasn't answered why Incolink gave $405,000 to the AWU when his union was negotiating 48 enterprise bargaining agreements with businesses, where Incolink was the required workers' entitlement fund.

So there are at least four or five significant conflicts of interest or unexplained payments that the Leader of the Opposition thinks he can keep avoiding. All these Deidre Chambers moments that we've experienced with the Leader of the Opposition, all of these amazing coincidences, remind us of Muriel's Wedding and Bill Heslop and Deidre Chambers. The thing with Muriel's Wedding was that it ended up catching up with Deidre and Bill; eventually, they were undone by all the coincidences. You can only be this shifty for so long before the public work you out. You can't get away with being this shifty for this long. (Time expired)