Zed Seselja (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Which is exactly what I am doing, because we believe, in order to get the budget under control, you have to grow the economy. There are all sorts of handbrakes on the economy and one of them is union corruption. We are prepared to stand up against it. The Labor Party prefers to do deals with those who engage in it. They take money from them; they owe their preselections to them and now they outsource procurement to them here in the ACT. We have the very person who has pleaded guilty for blackmail here in the ACT, who is part of the CFMEU, and who is the sub-branch president of the Labor Party here in Canberra. The conflict of interest and the potential for corruption, when you give him a list of potential contractors, undermines confidence. People in the building industry who see this type of corruption and the turning of a blind eye by the ACT Labor Party is something we see around the country unfortunately. We heard today that these kinds of deals are not unique to the ACT. If you want to grow the economy and the Labor Party is interested in it, I will give you a tip: do not do deals like ACT Labor has done with unions ACT; do not sell out to corrupt unions; and do not give corrupt unionists and stand-over merchants a veto power over your procurement in the ACT or anywhere else. (Time expired)