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

Thank you, Mr Deputy President. I have, in my seven-and-a-bit years in this place, rarely seem such contrived and confected outrage. One can only go to the motive of those opposite. As the news of endemic corruption in certain parts of Australia's labour movement bleeds out across the country, in an attempt to refer the pain or hide it, the Labor Party opposite sort of stubs its toe and tries to contrive some outrage of an event that did not occur.

The most important fact here is that Justice Heydon immediately withdrew. Those opposite are trying to pull together issues of the cost of a royal commission and issues of the timing of emails. They will not accept at face value the word of the commissioner and they try to imply that, somehow, there is a party political activity happening here, and it simply did not happen. There is no debate over that fact; it did not occur.

I note that Senator Collins, in her contribution during question time, referred to the cost of the royal commission. Quite rightly, given the scale of racketeering and illegal conduct in certain parts of the labour movement, particularly in my home state of Victoria, particularly here in the ACT as has already been brought to public attention by this commission, the costs to the community in terms of public infrastructure—every hospital we build, every private building of any significant size and all our infrastructure—are much, much greater.

This is an attempt at diversion. It is an attempt at diversion from the news that the Labor Party opposite is desperate that the Australian people not know. They do not want the Australian people to know that their masters, their mistresses, those who they work for, those who control their preselections, those who control and provide their slush funds, are involved in serious activity that is being uncovered by this royal admission and has already led to activity in the justice space which I will not go into in any more detail. Before anyone mentions any other events, that is the simple point that the Labor Party is trying to hide.