Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

That must be a new one! In relation to this position, we have a government that is, I think, clearly making a mockery of democracy and making a mockery of this chamber. They are refusing to be held accountable, and Minister Cash is a minister who has used public interest immunity more than any other minister I have seen in the decade that I've been in this place. This is a minister who, in a previous portfolio, has presided over an absolute disgrace of an administration—a minister who comes in here and is always prepared to use question time to attack union officials without any evidence, attack the trade union movement without any evidence and smear and use innuendo about ordinary Australians looking after working people day after day, doing the hard yards against the Business Council of Australia, who are trying to get tax cuts at the expense of working people. That's where this minister owes her allegiance. That's where this minister goes. This is a minister who turned a blind eye to the illegality of her former commissioner for the Australian Building and Construction Commission, Nigel Hadgkiss—a commissioner who ended up in disgrace, a commissioner who used $400,000 of public money, authorised by Minister Cash, to defend an illegality.

Senator Cash has got no credibility in this place. She has got no credibility as a minister. She has got absolutely no credibility in doing the right thing as a minister in this government. She misled the Prime Minister when she appointed Nigel Hadgkiss because she should have told the Prime Minister that Nigel Hadgkiss had breached the legislation that he was supposed to uphold. This is a minister with no credibility—absolutely none. If she were to do the right thing, she would resign from the frontbench and deal with the issues that she is facing. But all she is prepared to do, and all this government is prepared to do, is spend more and more public money to defend the indefensible. She is an absolute disgrace as a minister, and all the posturing, all the nonsense—