Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Minister for Veterans’ Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Well, you would know a lot about them, old boy. I reckon you have probably had your fair share of them as well. What has happened today is that those people who should have had the opportunity to have some input into this have lost that right to do so. Everyone in this chamber knows full well that, if there were matters that were to be put to the government, we had until next Thursday for that to be done. This matter did not need to be disposed of today. There can be only one reason for that. It is crocodile tears for those who have been affected, it is crocodile tears for those who should be protected, and it is only about the cheap motives of the Australian Labor Party.

There are some crossbenchers in this place who have not been here for long, and I am prepared to excuse them for what happened today during question time. But I am not prepared to excuse the Australian Greens and the Australian Labor Party and some crossbenchers who have been here for some time who have cried crocodile tears for due process. They are opposed to gags, which are spoken about by the Australian Greens particularly and they have done that since I have been in this place. Well, today, they simply lost any credibility. I can assure the Australian Greens and the Australian Labor Party that every time you put this up we are going to cite your deplorable behaviour today, because you stand utterly condemned for your behaviour today.

It is quite obvious to me that most of the Australian Labor Party have a pathological hatred of the small business sector, and they always have, because the small business sector does not support the Labor Party's philosophical view, which is about big unions and big business. The small business man or woman just gets thrown out. I say to the crossbenchers who have voted the way they have today: you have let down a group of people who were looking to you to provide them with a voice. You have taken away from them, with your behaviour today, the opportunity to have their voice heard. They do not expect the Australian Greens to hear their voice, because they never have. The Australian Greens hate small business. The Australian Labor Party hate small business. That we all know; that is a given. What I had hoped was not a given was that some of the crossbenchers here today who were clearly put into this place on the back of small business men and women would let them down, but they have, in a manner those men and women will never forgive.

What about the employees of a multitude of small financial planning businesses across Australia? Where has their voice been heard today? I say to the crossbenchers: how are you going to look them in the eye tomorrow and say, 'I had the opportunity to discuss this matter up until Thursday of next week and I decided I was not prepared to do so; I was going to back the Australian Labor Party because of their complete and utter ownership by the trade union movement, complete and utter ownership by the industry unions'? We on this side all know what the ramifications of that will be.

If the outcome of the Victorian state election Saturday week is that the CFMEU runs the state of Victoria, then the ramifications of that will be felt for a generation. Of course, it will be lauded by the Australian Labor Party. At nine o'clock on Sunday morning, if the results are known—and I do not think it will go this way, but if it does—guess who will be knocking on the door of Daniel Andrews's office? The CFMEU. What will they be saying to Daniel Andrews? 'Time to cough up, brother. Time to pay back.' The dirty deed has been done but it has not been dirt cheap. There have been tens of thousands of dollars of union money going into the Australian Labor Party, and guess who is the one that is the collector? Who is the big collector of the big bucks? Who is the collector of big favours from a change of government, if there is one? The CFMEU are the big collectors. They are the big-buck deliverers and they will get every single thing that they asked for. I say to the people of Victoria: if you want the CFMEU knocking on Daniel Andrews' door on Sunday morning, you should be acutely aware of what the ramifications of that will be. I do not think the Victorian people are going to let someone like the CFMEU, through their wholly-owned subsidiary, Daniel Andrews, run the state of Victoria.

I come back to this disallowance motion. I say to the crossbenchers: what are you going to say tomorrow when those small firms dotted around the country—decent men and women running decent businesses and employing decent Australians—ring up and say, 'Why wasn't my voice heard yesterday; why did you gag debate; why did you not let the Australian Senate have until next Thursday to see if we could get some resolution?' Oh no, it had to be knocked off today—we had to disenfranchise those people. I will tell you where a lot of them are from. They are from regional and rural Australia; they are dotted in small towns around this country and providing advice to a multitude of people. Those people they are providing advice to might be the farmers or they might be the tradespeople—they might be the plumbers, they might be the electricians or they might be the butchers or the employees on farms. But, oh no, apparently their voice was not worth hearing. Apparently their voice runs second to that of the trade union movement. I say to the crossbenchers that they have been duped by the Australian Labor Party. Do not think for one minute that the handwringing and the duplicitous language used by people like Senator Dastyari in any way mean that what happened today should be countenanced by anyone.

I say to those small business people and their employees who are listening to this or who will read this debate: there is only one group in this parliament who was prepared to support you, who was prepared to have your voice heard, who was prepared to sit down with the Australian Labor Party and others and see if we could have a resolution to this by next Thursday. But this disallowance motion did not include one word about fixing things. It did not include one word about trying to resolve this issue. It is just a dirty political trick to support the trade union movement, who we know completely owns the Australian Labor Party. I am bitterly disappointed on behalf of tens of thousands of Australians that some on the crossbench have allowed the voice of those people who supported them to be completely subsumed by the Australian Labor Party and big unions. What a seriously sad day it is for this chamber when we see question time cut off at the knees; when we see an Independent senator denied his right to ask a question; when we see debate gagged when this government said we had until next Thursday to reach some resolution of this matter so let us have the debate over that period and see if we can get somewhere. That was a perfectly reasonable offer. There is no mention from Senator Dastyari about that; no mention about the fact that on the table was the ability for this Senate to have a long and sensible debate about a resolution. There was no word of that—just the handwringing and the duplicitous language.

This is an opportunity lost for this chamber. This chamber had the opportunity today to send out a very clear message that we believe in people having the right to have their voices expressed through this chamber. We abrogated our responsibility to those people today in the most shameful of ways. Tomorrow morning, when the papers come out and people realise what has happened, it will be too late—but I hope there will be cause for reflection by many in this chamber.