Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Women) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Smith for his question. I am pleased to report that last night the Senate passed the Turnbull government's changes to the Fair Work Act, which ban corrupt payments between employers and unions. It's over! We saw, during the royal commission, that there were numerous examples of employers paying sums to unions which had the effect of seeing the particular employer be given favourable treatment from the union. This favourable treatment was at the expense of the workers who they were supposedly representing. It was one of the recommendations of the royal commission that payments such as these should be banned in the sole interests of the workers.

Can I thank senators from Pauline Hanson's One Nation, the Nick Xenophon Team and Senators Gichuhi, Hinch, Bernardi and Leyonhjelm for their support in passing this fundamental piece of industrial relations reform and for clearly showing that they are pro-worker and anticorruption. Despite the rhetoric of Mr Shorten even but a few weeks ago when he said, 'Let me be very clear—the Labor Party has no time for corruption,' what we saw last night was that, when it comes to employers and unions doing deals that are to the disadvantage of the worker, Labor will back the deals every step of the way. Let's face it: under Labor, corrupt payments would resume. The construction industry would be handed back over to the CFMEU; the CFA volunteers would be handed over to the UFU; and owner-drivers would be handed over to the TWU. (Time expired)