Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

If ever there was any remaining doubt within the community about the need for registered organisations to be subject to equivalent standards of governance and financial accountability as companies under corporations law it was completely and utterly dispelled by the excruciatingly inept performance by the Prime Minister over her personal involvement in the Australian Workers Union slush fund scandal. Her press conference today highlighted that, in the event that there was any remaining doubt within the community.

We were told that the Australian Workers Union slush fund was a one-off—only one rotten apple in the barrel. But that is what we are told about Craig Thomson and the Health Services Union. That is what we were told about Michael Williamson and the Health Services Union. That is what we were told about the Electrical Trades Union harbour-side mansion bought for a trade union official. That is what we are now being told about the CFMEU fund, which was ostensibly to assist workers with drug and alcohol issues, having funds taken from it for trade union bosses to use as their own plaything.

So this argument that there is just a one-off is no longer sustainable. The problem is, in fact, regrettably endemic. And the assertion, on the revelation of each scandal, that it is just a one-off—just a single bad apple in the barrel—has been blown out of the water by no other authority than the Prime Minister herself, when she, in her own words, in her exiting interview—to put it politely—with Slater and Gordon, acknowledged that 'every single union has a slush fund'. Those are not my words and they are not the words of the coalition; they form an acknowledgement by the highest person in this current government—namely, the Prime Minister herself.

So, let's not have any of this nonsense anymore, that slush funds either do not exist or that the slush funds are a one-off. Ms Gillard herself has now acknowledged—it is public; it is on the record—that every union has a slush fund. Can I say that I actually do not believe that every union has a slush fund, but there are so many of them that have been identified that it requires tough legislation. The reason is that hard-working genuine trade union members are entitled to have their fees protected from the likes of Michael Williamson, Craig Thomson and Bruce Wilson—I do not know what it is about names ending in 'son' but there does seem to be a trend there—and the harbour-side mansion of the Electrical Trades Union, just to mention four.

It is because of our concern for the genuine members of the trade union movement that the coalition has put forward a private member's bill to protect union members. Labor's approach to this bill will be a test of their moral fibre. The slush funds are endemic, and not according to me but according to the Prime Minister herself. So what Labor need to do is ask themselves a number of questions. What they have to do is ask themselves whether or not they can assure trade union members around Australia that slush funds like the Australian Workers' Union Workplace Reform Association, that the Prime Minister herself helped to set up for Mr Bruce Wilson in the 1990s, no longer exist. Do these slush funds still exist? Well, we know it happened in the HSU, in the ETU and in the CFMEU, and of course they are only the ones we actually know about.

If those opposite cannot give a guarantee, as they surely cannot, to the hardworking and long-suffering members of the trade union movement that these slush funds no longer exist, what is their argument against heavy penalties to stop those slush funds? Those opposite need to come clean as to their own knowledge of and involvement in any such slush funds. Regrettably, the slush funds have, it would appear, been part and parcel of the culture within the union movement and the ALP for a long, long time.

Those opposite need to explain and provide a logical reason why companies would voluntarily give tens of thousands of dollars to unauthorised trade union slush funds like the Australian Workers' Union Workplace Reform Association set up by the Prime Minister. Why would companies give money to such slush funds? Would it be, perchance, as a result of the implicit or actual threat of industrial unrest if they do not—in other words, as a result of extortion? This is part of the culture that this behaviour breeds. It is dishonest; it is ugly; it is unacceptable. Hence, the coalition has moved its legislation—because we treat these issues seriously. Those opposite seek to make light of the issue because, as ex trade union bosses, chances are they may well have been involved in such slush funds themselves.

The coalition proposition is straightforward. There is no moral or material difference between a company director misusing, misappropriating, shareholders' funds for his or her own personal benefit and a trade union boss using members' membership fees for his or her own personal benefit. Nobody has made out the argument as to why there should be a difference in the penalty regimes. If a company director had behaved in the manner that Fair Work Australia found Mr Craig Thomson to have behaved in, that company director would be subject to severe penalties, including the possibility of a five-year jail term. The Labor Party, to this point at least, have said, 'Oh, no; company directors should somehow get a different tariff for that sort of dishonest behaviour because trade union bosses are deserving of a lesser penalty.' The intellectual or moral argument has never been made out as to why that different standard ought to apply.

You can always rely on the Greens, however, to try to provide some argument. You have to give it to the workplace relations spokesman of the Australian Greens, Mr Adam Bandt. Today he came out with this gem: 'Until every small business makes full disclosure of all its financials, why should there be these heftier penalties for trade union bosses?' The answer is very simple: the vast majority of small businesses deal with their own personal money; they do not deal with public money collected by membership fees or by people buying shares in their small business. That is a substantial and material difference that, if I might say, somebody with Mr Bandt's intellect would know. It was a try-on. It was another attempted snow job by the Australian Greens.

I say to the Australian Greens and to the Australian Labor Party that this huge flow of information that has now come to public light of union slush funds has done the trade union movement untold damage. To those who suggest that a penalty of $6,600 might be a disincentive to the likes of Michael Williamson, who is reported to have siphoned off millions of dollars—those suggest that a $6,600 fine might act as a disincentive to buying a $1 million-plus executive mansion on the waterfront of Sydney—good luck. If you think a $6,600 fine might act as a disincentive for Mr Craig Thomson, with all his shenanigans, good luck. You do not live in the real world.

The question then is why— (Time expired)