Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) Share this | Hansard source

You've had your time on the floor, Senator Cash. Through the chair, Senator Cash, you've had your negotiations, you've had your time on the floor.

Let's be honest. For nine years you had your ABCC going. What did that do? It did nothing! If you think that by deregistering these people that will fix it, you are absolutely nuts. They are one-per-cent biker gang; that is what they have become. They are in construction, and they are one-per-centers. That is all that industry has turned itself into. That is it! If you remove patches off one-per-centers, they drive themselves underground and more destruction is done. That is all you will do with the CFMEU. You will drive them further underground.

You had nine years—nine years. This didn't happen just in three years. You had nine years to clean them up and you lost. You lost that fight because you couldn't get the job done. So let's remind people about that. You had nine years. You should have had a look at that person you put up, the judge Dyson Heydon, because he had no credibility to start with, let alone when he was finished, with what we found out about him. You didn't follow through with those recommendations properly, and therefore it has not worked. It has been crap!

We've got nothing else left but this administrator and his recommendations, given you had nine years to clean it up and you failed miserably to do that. I would rather let the administrator go and get the job done. That's what I want to see. Honestly, if you think that driving the CFMEU and those thugs underground, where they already bloody belong anyway, is going to help this country, you are terribly, terribly wrong.

Now, I don't mind having a go at Labor in Melbourne or in Victoria, because let's face it: they've had their eyes closed. They knew this stuff was going on. This is what has been so disappointing: we—all of us—have known about this stuff for years, but we have not tackled it. We have not tackled it, and it will need to be hard. It cannot be just a one-pronged approach; it will need to be a five- or a 10-pronged approach to take down the CFMEU once and for all.

I know people are hurting out there. I know that it's not just women being harassed out there—that belongs to the CFMEU. Quite frankly, you are disgusting individuals. You are disgusting. If you think this is your legacy, Setka, what a disgusting little legacy you have left, you little standover man—you with your man Gatto! Oh, my God! Oh, my goodness! You've got to love that this morning. You've got to love that.

So, honestly, if you think this is going to fix it overnight, you are delusional. Nothing is going to stop these people apart from having a hell of a big police taskforce on them for the next five to 10 years and making sure we are on their tails. We have to make sure that the administrator starts to pass them to those task groups, that they are charged and jailed, and that he sets examples. People want people to look up to people in here, and the best way to do this is by action.

I want this administrator to get his job done. But to come in here when we've got an economic crisis, which blows me away in itself, when we haven't finished with the administrator, just because this all blew up on Sunday night—by the way, Australians, it is nothing that all of us in here have not known about when it comes to the CFMEU. We've all known about it. Probably some of us haven't known the depth of it, but we've all known about it. I've been up here 10 years. That side couldn't fix it in nine. They couldn't fix it, so for God's sake let the administrator do his job. But, by God, I'm on his tail! I am speaking to him regularly because I am on his tail. He'd want to stay tough and he'd want to start putting them in jail, because that's what I want to see done and that's what the Australian people want to see done, because actions speak louder than words. That is when you will clean up backyards: when you start putting them behind bars so we're not putting up with this goddamn criminal behaviour—the ugliness of it! We want no more of it. It has got to stop. I won't be supporting this.