Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

I stand as a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia. These bills are about unravelling building industry cartels, and their union cronies are caught in the crossfire. The bills are about protecting and restoring this industry from the grip of the cartels. Above all, these bills support freedom—freedom of choice for union workers, whether or not they want to be in a union; freedom of choice for subbies; freedom of choice for small business; freedom of choice for taxpayers, so that we do not have to keep paying exorbitant rates for buildings that are controlled by a building industry cartel that includes the CFMEU. These bills support small business. These bills support taxpayers. These bills protect honest union members from their union bosses. These bills support the building industry.

I have had the pleasure of talking with Ken Phillips, who has explained to me how small businesses have been crippled by big businesses that want to suppress small business competition. They are pushing the risk down to the small businesses and they are doing the union's bidding. Unpaid bills certainly are rife in the industry—we know about that—and that is due largely to the power and control of a few large companies.

When I listen, in Queensland, to big, burly, well-muscled men running their businesses and they are in tears because of fear for their families and their employees then I know we have got a problem. Yet what did we hear from the Greens and the Labor Party last night? We heard about Fidel Castro, who destroyed his nation. We heard endlessly about Work Choices, ice dealers, diaries, fatalities. Fatalities are sad, but the fact is that safety improved under the previous ABCC provisions.

We heard all about the Chicken Littles—bwok bwok bekerk!—all the scratching and running around in this house last night, all the pecking, pecking, pecking, the Chicken Littles. I do not know which bill Senator Cameron was reading, but I—