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

I have only been here just under six years but I never cease to be amazed at the gall of those opposite. Whether it is on this side of the chamber or the other, all the contrived and confected outrage of Senator Wong, Senator Conroy, Senator Carr and various imitators of Statler and Waldorf cannot hide the profound duplicity of the Labor Party. I should add that it is not just those opposite; it is their Greens cousins down the corridor here. We sat in this chamber for the last few years and witnessed nothing less than a protection racket Tony Soprano would have been proud of. It was a protection racket to protect one of their own in the other place—a racket to protect Craig Thomson, who is now awaiting sentencing. The Labor Party and the Greens voted to prevent information that was presented in camera to a Senate committee getting to the Australian public. We knew what was in it because we could sit in those committees, Senate or joint. You knew what it was because some of you knew what it was like beforehand, and what he was like before he got here. Yet you have the gall to come in here and criticise someone else through sledging, slurring and making unfounded allegations. The Labor Party has absolutely no credibility on these matters.

The New South Wales ALP is so debased that the best people can do now is to come into this chamber to defer and deflect attention from the fact that a former ALP national president has been convicted and is going to jail and a former one of their parliamentary party is awaiting sentencing. So the best they can do in true Labor style is to sledge and to slur. At no point, as Senator Brandis and Senator Abetz have outlined, has there been an accusation of illegality or corruption. They stand behind 'We are just asking questions'—questions they would not let be asked about their own colleagues; questions they would not let be asked about Craig Thomson. They are asking questions in this chamber but they prevented information going to the Australian public about Craig Thomson, and they knew what it was: the unprecedented corruption in the Health Services Union; the use of members' money that has been found to be illegal. And they come in here and complain about an upstanding contributor to public life such as Senator Sinodinos with all the contrived and confected outrage that only a racketeer could muster. The Labor Party has become nothing more than a corrupted cabal of cronies where all the people opposite come here representing part of an alphabet soup because their union shareholders own a seat on those benches. When they are in office they launder money by giving it to the trade unions through training funds which then flow back to the Labor Party in donations and employment of organisers that campaign in seats. They have the gall to criticise people that have made a contribution to the private sector.

If I could turn to Senator Sinodinos, as Senator Abetz has said, his decision is one we regret but respect. As the Prime Minister has said this afternoon in the other place, it reflects the best and most honourable of Westminster traditions and this is the sign of the character of a man who has given our country such faithful service. Today Senator Sinodinos's actions point out the emptiness and the hollowness of the Labor Party. We sat here and witnessed the Labor Party protect their own because power is all they care about. I have seen them hand over $10 million to the Trade Union Training Authority, which then means that unions do not have to pay for training like every other business does. They are free then to employ more people or make more donations or pay higher affiliation fees or, dare I say it, get more hotel movies and more after executive committee entertainment.

The Labor Party by its attack on Senator Sinodinos has shown up its own failings—the fact that it has no standards, the fact that all it has is the ability to sledge and to slur, the fact that it seeks to hold other people to standards to which it will not hold itself. I notice Senator O'Neill shaking her head. The only thing a member of the New South Wales ALP should do is to bow their head, because it is the most corrupted organisation in the history of Australian political parties—