Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

The honourable member poses now as the champion of the workers—the same workers that he sold down the river, trading away their penalty rates, when he was a union official; the same workers who are threatened with violence by the CFMEU, by John Setka, a union official whom he depends on for his leadership and whom he will not condemn. He does not even have the courage to say that he should be sacked as an official of the CFMEU, any more than that hero from Watson was prepared to do—'Oh, it's a matter for the union.' After all, how much do you threaten people to actually get slammed by the member for Watson or the Leader of the Opposition?

Let's be quite clear: what John Setka threatened to do was take thugs from his union and follow hardworking public servants around, follow them home, threaten them with violence, threaten them in front of their children and threaten them at their clubs. You would think that a Labor Party that cared about the rule of law and about Australian values would call for him to be sacked. And what they have done? Nothing at all—no denunciation at all.

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