Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to Senator Abetz, the Minister representing the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations. I refer the minister to the government’s industrial relations laws and the ACTU’s dirty tricks manual, which details how the unions are trying to mislead voters about those laws. Has the minister seen reports that the ACTU strategy may be illegal? Will the minister inform the Senate about how the Labor Party and the ACTU are joined in this attempt to deceive Australian workers and their families about the effect of the government’s job-creating industrial laws?

Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Birmingham for his question and congratulate him on his first speech yesterday. I did read with interest suggestions that the ACTU’s dirty tricks campaign to manipulate public opinion about the current workplace laws is likely to be illegal. It would certainly appear that voters’ enrolment status, latest addresses et cetera, provided to Magenta Linus by the Electoral Commission, has been illegally passed to various unions in breach of the Commonwealth Electoral Act. Not only that, but unions are likely to be breaching privacy laws by collecting and storing irrelevant personal information such as mortgage information and family situation information without the consent of their members.

I listened with interest yesterday as Mr Rudd and Ms Gillard refused to condemn this roundly repudiated dirty tricks campaign while at the same time trying to pretend they knew nothing about it—the hallmark of Mr Rudd; like he knew nothing about Brian Burke’s breakfast, lunch and dinner, although he happened to be there! Like he did not know about the false dawn on Anzac Day or he did not know about certain business activities—

Opposition Senators:

Opposition senators interjecting—

Paul Calvert (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Senators on my left will come to order!

Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Labor Party get very touchy and glass-jawed when you point out the huge weaknesses in their leader. Every time he is trouble, he pretends to deny any knowledge of what he is confronted with.

I also saw with interest Ms Gillard, in full slippery mode, describing Magenta Linus as a private company. That may be the case, but it is also a private company that is so closely linked to the ALP that it created and provides Labor’s electoral management database, Electrac.

Helen Coonan (NSW, Liberal Party, Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Coonan interjecting—

Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And Magenta Linus is actually owned and operated, Senator Coonan, by two former ALP employees. It is so close to Labor that it is even intimately linked to one Labor senator in this chamber.

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Marshall interjecting—

Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I can invite Senator Marshall to guess who it might be. It is a senator who describes herself—so it is not Senator Marshall—as a director of Magenta Linus Superannuation, an entity very closely related to Magenta Linus. Yes, none other than Labor Senator Hurley. I am sure Mr Rudd will tell us that he also knew nothing of that connection with Senator Hurley, who is of course so intimately connected to this dirty tricks exercise. No-one should be fooled: the ALP and the ACTU are both up to their necks in this exercise. Personal information available to Magenta Linus only by virtue of being Labor’s database manager appears to have been illegally passed on to the big brothers in the union movement—and for only one reason: to manipulate the union membership’s vote for Mr Rudd’s and the unions’ benefit.

Today we saw Mr Lawrence, the new head of the ACTU, say that he wanted a closer relationship between Labor and the trade union movement. You’ve gotta be joking! The space between sardines in a tin would be very comfortable in comparison with the closeness between Mr Rudd and the union movement. Make no mistake, a vote for Kevin Rudd is a vote for the trade union movement to interfere in the daily—(Time expired)