Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the shadow minister for his questions, and I will deal with them.

It is good to see that the opposition is constructively engaging on the registered organisations commission bill and proposing amendments in the Senate. Obviously, today the House passed the registered organisations commission bills, and we did so with a debate management motion. It did not afford the opposition—particularly new members of the opposition, including the member for Bruce—the opportunity to speak on this bill. But, as I pointed out to the House today, this was the fourth time that the House had considered the registered organisations commission bill. It has been through an exhaustive committee process in both the Senate and in the House of Representatives. The bill that was presented and has now been passed by the House today is in exactly the same form as it was on the other three times it was passed by the House of Representatives. So there is nothing new under the sun in relation to this particular bill.

So I do congratulate the opposition on at least being prepared, when this bill goes to the Senate, to move amendments and to be part of the negotiation process. Of course, the nature of the 45th Parliament is that the coalition has a majority in the House of Representatives—which has been proven time and time again this week—but not in the Senate. Therefore—

Mr Brendan O'Connor interjecting—

Yes, there is still another day to go—that is absolutely right! But I am pretty confident that we might have learnt that lesson, shadow minister. In the Senate, negotiation is the name of the game, so I am glad that the opposition is prepared to put forward constructive suggestions.

The government has a very firm view that the proposed registered organisations commission is the best means of delivering honest unions and honest union leaders. The coalition does not have a history of being anti-union—we have a history of being anti crooked union boss and bad union. That is exactly where we should be. I am sure that most members of the ALP—I cannot speak for them all, of course—also abhor dishonest union leaders, because they give honest union leaders a very bad name. Of course, as almost everybody in the Labor Party caucus is a former union leader, I am sure many of them feel very badly about the fact that dishonest union leaders give the rest of them a bad name.

Of course it is worth remembering that the ROC bill was born out of the appalling behaviour of the former member for Dobell, Mr Craig Thomson, who was the secretary of the Health Services Union. The government did not propose these measures because there was not a problem to be solved—there was a problem. The problem was dishonest union leaders ripping off their members—in the Health Services Union's case amongst the poorest workers in the work force such as cleaners in aged care homes and hospitals all around Australia. None of them could be accused of earning expansive incomes, and they were ripped off by Craig Thomson in a heinous way, and also by Mr Williamson before him. The government introduced the registered organisations commissions bill and we think it is the best mechanism to solve the issues. I doubt very much that the Labor Party's amendments will make it a better bill but I am sure that Senator Cash, when she deals with these matters, will deal with them in an even-handed way and give the Labor Party their fair due.

We all know why the Labor Party wants to reduce the thresholds for the disclosure of donations. We all know what happened last time. When the Hawke government introduced the disclosure thresholds, businesses that had previously given to the coalition were visited by union bosses all around Australia and told, 'You don't have to give us the same as you give the coalition, we know you support the coalition, but you must at least give us half.' Businesses that had never dreamt of giving money to the Labor Party to campaign against the coalition were forced, essentially by extortion, into funding a political party that they had had absolutely no intention of ever supporting. As a consequence, that has skewed the system. We do not get the same out of the unions, obviously, and as a consequence we will not be considering the Labor Party 's amendments to the disclosure requirements.

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