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

I thank Senator Paterson for the question. Unions have a responsibility to deal openly and honestly with their members and to put the interests of their members first. In the same respect, though, employers have a duty to act with integrity towards their employees and not do secret deals that will adversely affect those employees.

It is unfortunate that the Heydon royal commission, like so many royal commissions before it, uncovered rafts of payments collectively worth millions of dollars from employers to unions made for highly questionable purposes. What is worse, they were never disclosed to the members of the union or the employees.

What did these include? Three renovations of a union official's home, bogus payments said to be for training that was never actually provided, and secret deals by which employers paid unions such as the AWU to keep workers' pay and conditions at below award rates. What an absolute disgrace! Others extracted payments to bolster their status and power, particularly within the Labor Party. For example, the current Leader of the Opposition, Bill Shorten, and Cesar Melhem. They were effective at this, to say the very least. They were regularly signing employees up to the union without their knowledge and securing ongoing payments to the AWU in Victoria.

Most people would say, 'How come the law allows this to happen?' The Heydon royal commission recommended that payments like these be criminalised. So we are going to introduce legislation to criminalise secret payments between employers and unions. (Time expired)