Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Hansard source

I have been waiting for the opportunity to follow ex-union boss Senator Doug Cameron in a debate such as this. I want to refer to an article in the Australian Financial Review of 16 November 2012. I notice Senator Cameron is leaving the chamber. I say to Senator Cameron in his absence: it is probably appropriate that you do leave, because you would not like what Grace Collier, the chief executive of Australian Dismissal Services, said in this article in the Australian Financial Review that I refer to tonight. She said:

After … 20 years' experience working in unions and as an industrial relations consultant, I feel well placed to make observations about the union movement.

Being employed in the union movement isn’t like working in a company. It can be a bit like working for a cult. All unions are different, but union officials … see themselves as soldiers in the war of labour versus capital, and to fight a war you need resources. In this environment, the group think is this: anything improper can be justified as proper when it is for "the good". Union troops know that breaking the law is sometimes required because when a law is "unjust" you have a "duty" to ignore it. Civil disobedience is okay if the end justifies the means.

I do not have a great deal of time today, and I do want to hear my leader speak on other matters related to this very important topic, but this is a great article. It goes through some of the ways the union movement operates. I do not want to involve you in this, Mr Acting Deputy President Bishop, but I see in the newspaper that you are running afoul of the union movement at the present time. Senator Kim Carr, who is in the chamber, well knows about this, because there is a man embedded in the union. You only have to look at Mr Craig Thomson to understand what unionists think: if you have to break the law, it is all good for the ultimate goal. If you look at what Mr Thomson did in relation to—or, sorry, is alleged to have done, I should say—