Tony Sheldon (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Minister, I appreciate you're only getting briefed from the side about the Transport Workers Union, but I just might add that the court said that no-one was materially affected, and no election was affected, by how the registration was kept and that a series of elections had taken place without any interference. It was a technical breach of substantial size.

I'll just go to another, final question. In July this year, 22,000 Health Services Union members went on strike after a series of assaults and abuse at work. In January, a worker was stabbed by a patient. Two nurses and a patient were also stabbed, with scissors, by a patient. Now, a number of those workers who went on strike were not in directly high-risk areas. In fact, you would consider a number of those workers who went on strike as being in substantially low-risk areas. They were not in imminent danger. They went on strike in solidarity, in collectivism, in unity, with fellow Australians who were being stabbed. This was not a risk question for them. It was a question of doing the right thing, and getting the government to stand up and do the right thing. It was an illegal strike by many of those workers; there was no risk to them. In the circumstances, if that union and the workers were found to have breached the Fair Work Act—which, I might add, they did, proudly—and points were awarded against that union, would that add to a case of deregistration, with all the expense that incurs and with the deflection of the substantial resources that the union is presently putting into dealing with aged care and dealing with the rip-offs in the NDIS?