Scott Ryan (Victoria, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

What a performance we have seen, although I will say that I have seen Senator Wong undertake the confected outrage much more seriously than that. It may have been when she was on this side of the chamber, but here we have a beat-up story against Senator Nash, who has answered every question to her in this Senate and who has come into this Senate and provided further information. The Labor Party is desperate to talk about something other than issues that matter to Australians, like jobs, because their own record is so poor. They try and confect one of these alleged conflict of interest claims by slandering people and, essentially, by asserting that, since someone once worked somewhere and that their wife is now the CEO and that they may have engaged with a company, that means they are disqualified from serving in a public office.

Let us look at the Labor Party's record. I am sick to death of hearing of these confected claims of conflict of interest from a party that practises it. This is a party that openly and proudly states that it is the political wing of the labour movement. When it is in office, all we see it do is funnel money to that labour movement. On 1 February each and every year we get the Australian Electoral Commission's periodic disclosures. What do we see in those disclosures? The shareholders, the funders, the owners of individual Senate seats in this chamber are the trade union movement. Let us look at Labor's record. How much money did they throw into the trade union movement when they were in office? There was $20 million handed over for trade union training. The previous coalition government got rid of public funding for the Trade Union Training Authority, because that is a job for unions. We do not hand over money to small businesses to do the jobs they are required to do, but you hand over money to unions which gets laundered through their system and handed back to you for political campaigns. And you try to allege that someone because of where they once worked or where their wife works has a conflict of interest—the gall!

Let us go through some other numbers. As well as the $20 million for trade union training—I know plenty of businesses that would like help like that, but they do not do anything in that space—there is money that goes to our favourite union in Victoria, the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, Construction and General Division Victoria Branch. In 2011 they were handed $458,034.50. It is a work to rule sort of culture, and so the CFMEU will count every cent of it. It was probably handed over by cheque, rather than some other means involved in the allegations of what is going on in the CFMEU in Victoria, where it tends to be loose notes in brown paper bags. This union also donates to the Labor Party. The description of the grant to the union was: 'assistance to provide Victorian building and construction workers training in language, literacy and numeracy integrated with units of competency from construction and business services training packages for WorkCover licences and accredited first aid courses'. That is just a cover for you handing over money to your shareholders. Every other business in Australia has to pay those costs itself, and the Labor Party hands over money to people to do their daily job and then those unions find the cash to hand back to the Labor Party come election time.

That is not the limit of it; there is money handed over to the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union—$199,982 in 2011. It was to fund a project officer to assist labour market adjustment in the automotive manufacturing industry. It was Paul Keating who said that the AMWU had 100,000 manufacturing job scalps personally with a previous member of this place, Senator George Campbell.