Steven Ciobo (Moncrieff, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, the Service Economy and Tourism) Share this | Hansard source

The reason why the two million-plus small businesses of Australia have zero confidence in this government is that they know what this government is actually all about. They know the real motive of the Rudd Labor government. The real motive of the Rudd Labor government is tied up in the whole history of the Australian Labor Party. You hear the Prime Minister stand up in this chamber and talk about how proud he is to see $2 million go towards the Labor ‘stump of knowledge’. We hear the Labor Party talk about its proud union history. We start to uncover some very interesting things about the Rudd Labor government and about the Labor Party more broadly. Recently there was an interesting article in the Sunday Telegraph that spoke about the way the Australian Labor Party operates and the way that the Rudd Labor government deals with small business. It spoke about the TWU, the Transport Workers Union, one of the unions that we hear members opposite talk about so often and in such glowing terms. What do we find out about the way the TWU operates? I quote from the newspaper:

Union whistleblower Tony O’Donnell alleges union officials were ordered to perform time-consuming company inspections for alleged breaches of workplace safety laws until they agreed to pay into the fund. If they did not allow you entry, you’d have them over a breach of the law, Mr O’Donnell said. A legitimate inspection can bring a small business to a grinding halt, a medium business pretty close to it ... I could ask for records over the last five years.

That is the Labor Party record: ‘Let us apply whatever pressure we can on Australia’s small businesses and on Australia’s medium sized businesses and rake in all that money to the Labor Party coffers.’ We know they have form because the Labor Party were happy to suck in rivers of gold, millions and millions of dollars from Australian taxpayers, through Centenary House—and now we know that the Labor Party are happy to shut down small businesses to protect their union mates. Why? Because they take the money for their campaigns. I have no doubt that the minister at the table probably took money directly from the TWU.

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