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

I certainly am, Madam Deputy President. Thank you. However, the reach of the CFMEU's tentacles does not stop there. In 2010 alone the CFMEU donated $1.2 million to extreme left-wing activist group GetUp!, one of whose founding board members was Mr Bill Shorten, and at least two so-called Independents in this parliament are receiving union funding.

We see, in fact, that the priority of CFMEU bosses is not their members' jobs, which they happily sacrifice, but the protection of nefarious CFMEU officials from scrutiny and prosecution for their crimes. I make the point that this party is sacrificing coalminers' jobs in the state of Queensland and sacrificing, as I will explain in a minute, small businesses and union members. We have seen even the new head of the ACTU, Sally McManus, publicly state that unions do not need to comply with the law. Sadly, this approach is very much a case study of the Leader of the Opposition's model of industrial governance.

So let's take a closer look at the opposition leader and what he did for his fellow union members whilst head of the AWU. In 2004, Mr Shorten signed an enterprise bargaining agreement—and this is where I am coming back to—with Cleanevent that allowed them to work staff around the clock for up to 12 hours at a time and up to 60 hours a week without award penalties or loadings. Any honest union leader would have known that this agreement was against the interests of their members and a sweeter deal for their employer—but not Mr Shorten. The opposition leader has previously boasted that he 'always improved workers' conditions', but just this one agreement shows that this claim is false. For the hapless low-paid workers at Clean Event, things just got worse under Mr Shorten. When this rip-off EBA expired, the Labor leader exploited John Howard's Work Choices laws to negotiate another deal with the company which ripped off another $2 million from his workers' pay packets.

Why on earth would a union leader do this? Why would he sell out the very workers he was supposed to be elected to defend? The answer is self-interest. Clean Event gave $40,000 to Mr Shorten's subsequent election campaign. The Heydon royal commission also uncovered other payments. Visy Packaging paid the AWU $190,000 in return for EBA deals that grossly underpaid its workers. And so it goes on and on.

Of course, these are not isolated cases. Mr Shorten was not the only union leader selling out his own members. Around 250,000 Australian workers are being underpaid with below-award rates negotiated by union bosses like Mr Shorten in return for crooked payments from employers. This costs mainly low-paid workers around $300 million a year. Quite a number of the union bosses who sold out their members with these rip-off EBAs have gone on to be elected to parliament, just like Mr Shorten—leading the workers from behind a brandy balloon. These rip-off EBAs failed the 'better off overall' test but have been approved because corrupt union officials and the big businesses who bribe them have colluded to fool the Fair Work Commission into approving them.

Let us consider the example of McDonald's workers. Instead of receiving the award rate of $29.16 per hour on a Sunday, their workers get just $21.08 per hour thanks to a union-sanctioned rip-off EBA. That is a 27 per cent pay cut for McDonald's workers courtesy of their own union bosses. KFC and Pizza Hut are much the same. On Sundays their workers get only $21.09 and $20.35 per hour respectively. They are all giant foreign-owned corporations, all getting sweetheart deals to rip off Aussie workers.

But the local family-run milk bar that tries to compete with them does not get to pay those rates. No, they still have to pay the $29.16 per hour, so how on earth can they compete with giant multinational chain stores? I wonder how much tax they are paying. As the leader of our party has raised many times, and as I have, they cannot compete. That is why the small businesses are going out of business. Family-owned corner stores are disappearing fast, thanks in great part to the opposition leader and his corrupt union mates.

Let us look at clothing stores. On Sundays David Jones pays $29.53 per hour, but family-owned boutiques and shoe shops have to pay $37.05 per hour. Then there are hotels. International hotels, like the Sheraton or the Hilton, get to pay their workers just $21.63 per hour on a Sunday, while family-owned bed and breakfasts have to pay $31.87. How can they compete—