Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

As the Leader of the Opposition says, ‘I’m going to force you to jump in the lake if you don’t agree with what I have to say.’ They would be shaking in their boots. You would even have Joe McDonald’s braces pop up—‘No ticket, no start’ and away they go.

You would have thought that, at the same time as the Leader of the Opposition saying he was not going to be controlled by the union bosses, he would have stood up for one of his senators that was being knifed in the Senate. I picked up the Australian and the Age and they were a great read. In the Age Senator Linda Kirk, who has only been a Labor Senator for South Australia for a short period of time, said:

The trade union vote is such that they can get up their own ...

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If you don’t have a good trade union base, it is impossible to get into a winnable position, even with branch support—

in the Labor Party. Senator Kirk was disendorsed by the Labor Party because Joe de Bruyn did not like what she had to say. She says in the Australian today:

Joe de Bruyn said that if I did not vote against the stem-cell legislation I could not expect support from the union for preselection.

He singled me out ... I wasn’t prepared to toe the union line.

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Yes, I have lived by the union and died by the union.

I went back to the Leader of the Opposition’s interview on the Sunday program when he was asked about a shoppies union official, Mr Farrell, who was coming into replace Senator Kirk. He said:

He’s a very effective, very effective person who will actually bring a lot of experience and a lot of balance also in to the ranks of the Parliamentary Labor Party ...

Balance! Another union official coming into the Labor Party in the Senate to deliver balance! I thought to myself, ‘Hang on, how many senators from South Australia representing the Labor Party are former trade union officials?’ Sixty per cent. This takes it up to 80 per cent. If that is balance in the way the Leader of the Opposition says he wants balance, there is no room for any dissenting voice from the trade union bosses when it comes to Labor Party preselection. We should not forget, and the Australian people will not forget. Every member of the parliamentary Labor Party is a member of the trade union movement and now they are getting rid of people of conscience and replacing them with more union bosses so that they can toe the union line.

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