Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Employment) Share this | Hansard source

I usually hang on every word that Senator Nash tells this Senate and I have no reason to disbelieve that that is something that Senator Nash may have said and that Senator Lambie is faithfully representing that to the chamber.

What it once again shows is the horrid culture of corruption within the building sector. I said when the Heydon royal commission was launched that this would be a two-edged sword and that, if inappropriate payments were being made to trade unions, chances were that those payments were being made by employers and contractors who in effect want an easy life and, therefore, pay themselves out of trouble—the sort of circumstance which has now been revealed as having occurred with Chiquita Mushrooms, when a certain trade union official, now parading as an alternate Prime Minister, engaged in it as well. (Time expired)