Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment Participation, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, he is ducking for cover, as Senator Bernardi has just mentioned. This was a rushed program and it was implemented in the most incompetent manner, and all of that has been well documented in recent weeks. But why is this minister, who told us earlier this week that he attended regular meetings to supervise the rollout of this program and to discuss issues of risk and to discuss other issues in relation to the rollout of this program, not prepared to tell us when he first became aware of the serious worker safety issues in relation to this program? Perhaps he does not know.

The reality is that this minister is too busy running the affairs of the New South Wales Labor Party to be properly focused on his responsibilities as a minister. This minister is trying to stop New South Wales premiers from getting rolled and is having to manage the fallout when they do get rolled. He is doing deals offering Labor Party preselection to the Senate and then taking it away. He is having lunches and dinners in the cafes and Chinese restaurants of Sydney where he is offering preselection or taking it away. I will be very interested in the contribution of Senator Hutchins to this take-note motion, because I would like to hear from Senator Hutchins what he thinks about Senator Arbib’s activities in New South Wales.

Then you hear Senator Arbib has got his proteges being appointed as secretaries-general of the New South Wales Labor Party and then getting them sacked. Of course if he gets them sacked he has to find them a job in the Senate. I wonder who are going to be the people suffering the consequences of that. If you have a minister that is so entrenched and so desperate to stay on top of the machinations of the New South Wales Labor Party, of course he cannot focus on his true job as a minister of the Crown.

This is very serious. There have been some serious failings in the rollout of this program that have been seriously criticised by industry experts right from the word go. The minister has got some serious questions to answer and he is refusing to answer them. The Prime Minister, who to get his job was relying on Senator Arbib to roll the great Labor federal member from Western Australia, Kim Beazley, has probably been accommodating Senator Arbib’s failings—too much so, we would argue. He is prepared to look past them. But this is a time when the Prime Minister should stand up to the New South Wales Labor Right’s powerbroker, Senator Arbib, because he is actually losing his influence. The word on the street is that he is struggling to keep a hold on what is going on over there. I hope, for the sake of Senator Hutchins, that he will not succeed in stopping his preselection. (Time expired)