Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Macdonald. There is still one more question time, but it is revealing that at a time when there is no shortage of issues confronting our nation that Labor senators on that side seek to confuse and whip up a bit of a fear campaign. Indeed, they try to trawl over an issue such as the Bell Group litigation, only to end up with it all over their faces.

What we have seen this week is the modern Labor Party in bed with big unions. We only have to go back to the Bell Group litigation and the scandalous affairs that rocked the WA Labor government in the eighties to see the danger that arises when big Labor gets into bed with big unions. If there is some time available to me I will come to that point and the findings of that royal commission, which fired a shot across the bow of the modern Labor Party in the late 1980s and in the 1990s.

But let me get to the issue—let me get to the suggestion from Senator Cameron this afternoon that somehow there was this grand conspiracy on the part of the coalition to let foreign workers run amok in our country. It is just a boldfaced lie.

Opposition senators interjecting—

And why is that? Why is it a lie? You could have read in The Daily Telegraph, Senator Dastyari, Senator Carr and Senator Bilyk, exactly why that is a lie.

Senator Dastyari interjecting—

Senator Dastyari, I know that you know what I am about to say. You know that I am about to talk about McDonald's. You know that I am about to talk about Clive Palmer—