Barry O'Sullivan (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I will. Thank you, Chair. A wonderful chair you are. I am telling you now, it would be a lot more if most of these union people did not clip the ticket on the way through. They have big bills to meet, themselves—house payments, buying houses, going to bordellos, rich wine—it goes on and on. Many of these people are unsavoury individuals.

Long before you want to start trotting out questions about transparency and putting caps on donations, the first thing you need to do, on behalf of my coalition—I have been given no right to do this but I am going to do it anyway—I say to the people of Australia: we will never take one dinar off organised crime, not one. One of you, whoever is making the next contribution, needs to stand up and repeat that. I know you cannot. I know you will not. The $100 million from the trade union movement, I have to be honest, I am only human: if they rolled out $100 million to my mob I probably would have been absent from the chamber today. I probably would not have come in. I probably would have had to think long and hard about it. But it is not my mob that is taking the money.

I agree with you all, particularly Senator Cameron when he says we need to have a long, hard look about the patronage that comes with the big donations. You and I could make a two-man committee, Senator Cameron, and we would come back to this place with recommendations. When we do there will not be one single trade union left in the legislation if they take into account my contribution to the report.

This is atrocious. It is embarrassing. You shouldn't just condemn them. Anyone can get up here and say. 'I've told them not to be bullies. I've told them not to threaten people. I've told them not to rip off their members. I've told them not to misappropriate the funds.' Anyone can do that. I can do that. It takes courage, a courage your mob does not have, to stare down the barrel and tell them you are not going to take one more lick of those trade unions that are organised criminals. It is easy to do. You will fit it into a sentence with six or seven words in it. If you are having a struggle with the narrative pop around to my office and I will help you draft it.