Sue Boyce (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The complete denial from the other side that corruption happens in any way within the union movement is just very sad. As I said earlier, I support Senator Cameron's view that democracy requires transparency, but it also requires accountability and members of many unions have not had that. We have had it in minute detail as to how that has not happened for the Health Services Union. And of course there are other unions involved, and I have just run through a small list that, coincidentally, was published in TheWest Australian today. We have the Ai Group urging the Heydon royal commission to investigate claims that unions are receiving generous and undisclosed kickbacks from income protection insurers to sign up members. We have the Master Builders wanting all payments made by employers for training by unions to be investigated. We have the fact that there are training groups set up by the CFMEU, the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, and that they lent some money to a training organisation—in fact training has been a nice little earner for unions. That is fine if what is happening is genuine training for genuine reasons. But that is not what has been happening. It is being used as a way to milk employers yet again in an apparently honest way. But of course it is not honest; it is the usual overkill and attempts at bribery.

We go on to look at the AWU slush fund scandal, which is the whole reason that the royal commission was established. We even have reports of one union official saying that many of the members of the AWU had secret TAB accounts where they could hide $1,000 or so from the missus. Now of course they were not just hiding the money from the missus; they were hiding the money from their members, from the tax office, and from any efforts that could be made to try to bring criminal charges for fraud against them.

I have mentioned already, of course, Mr Thomson and the HSU. Even more serious, and certainly a matter of great concern in my home state of Queensland, have been the apparent links between the CFMEU and organised crime. On the east coast of Australia we have recorded conversations, bank records and police files that demonstrate that major crime, bikie gangs and the CFMEU have all been working together very nicely within the construction industry. I would hope that the members opposite would agree with me that these matters need to be exposed. They have no place in Australia and they have no place within a union movement that is trying very hard to—