Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Women) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Paterson for his question—and, yes, I can. In recent years, it has been very disappointing that Australians have learned of certain unions and certain union officials that have not acted in the best interests of their organisations or their members. This has happened because of the inadequate laws in place that have allowed this behaviour to occur. For example, we have learned of the Australian Workers Union practice of issuing false invoices that are conveniently marked as 'training', 'OHS' or similar, but what they are really for is covering payments for stacked union memberships. Those who were secretly signed up included netballers and horse-racing jockeys, including the last two Melbourne Cup winners. They were signed up without their knowledge. They had never agreed to join the union and had never given their consent.

Why was this done? Having these numbers on the books of the AWU bolstered their power base within the Australian Labor Party. We have also heard of other deals done between an employer and a union. That employer was Cleanevent and again the union was AWU. In this case, the employer, Cleanevent, agreed to pay to the union $25,000 per year for three years. What did the union get in return? They got the names of all of the employees, but what is worse is that they stripped the workers of their penalty rates. Just in case people do not know: who was the National Secretary of the AWU at the time? None other than the Leader of the Opposition at the moment, Bill Shorten. An absolute disgrace.