Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Minister for Immigration and Border Protection) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for his question. I want to follow on from the Leader of the House and the Prime Minister, because there is another grubby protection racket and money-laundering exercise going on within the union movement. This involves the CFMEU. The CFMEU has contributed about $10 million to the Labor Party. They have their claws into this Leader of the Opposition, like other union bosses. He can turn his back, which is a recent trick, just like he did on the workers, but I think the Leader of the Opposition should listen to this. He should listen to this because there is a treasure trove. The more that you look at this Leader of the Opposition, the bigger the case becomes against him.

We know that the CFMEU, just before the last election, not only donated millions of dollars to the Labor Party; they also joined the Leader of the Opposition to get through a cosy deal at the Labor Party conference to pass their vote policy, because they were worried that the left of the party was going to trample the Leader of the Opposition's position in relation to boats. We know what happened when that happened when Labor was last in government. When Kevin Rudd promised that there would be no boats and that there would just be a continuation of the Howard government policy, 50,000 people came on 800 boats and, tragically, 1,200 people drowned at sea. We know that if the Labor Party is re-elected, if this Leader of the Opposition, who is again turning his back, is elected as Prime Minister of this country, the left will take control of the Labor Party again. You need to hear about the boats that arrived and the people who died. You need to recognise that as you look across the front bench there are many, including the member for Grayndler, who at conference opposed the Leader of the Opposition when it came to the boats policy. He is sitting there twiddling his thumbs, but let me say that you cannot trust the Labor Party when it comes to boats. You cannot trust the Labor Party when it comes to staring down people smugglers, and you cannot trust this Leader of the Opposition when it comes to dodgy payments. This Leader of the Opposition has a whole track record—years and years and years—of being involved in deals where he has taken benefits away from workers, where businesses have paid the Australian Workers' Union—

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