Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Hansard source

This Liberal Party enjoys delivering lectures on integrity. Last week, I heard the Attorney-General on the radio doing it again in relation to this bill. He and the other phony tough guys in the Liberal Party are telling us that they are going to ensure the integrity of the union movement. But, as the old saying goes, this seems to be a case of do as I say, not do as I do. To paraphrase another old saying, this Liberal government should focus on putting its own house in order before it lectures others on matters of integrity, because this Liberal Party has an uneasy relationship with the concept of integrity. There is not enough time in the day to go through them all, but let's just touch on a few examples that illustrate that fact.

We know that the member for Hume, along with his friend the Treasurer of Australia, still has questions to answer about the alleged illegal poisoning of critically endangered grasslands on a property partly owned by—guess who? The member for Hume. We know that his own department, the Department of the Environment and Energy no less, is now investigating this honourable member because of his interest in a company called Jam Land Pty Ltd, which was involved in that alleged poisoning of critically endangered grasslands. We also know that record-breaking amounts of money were paid by the Commonwealth to buy water from a company with links to this same member for Hume, a company that was owned by a Cayman Islands based entity that the same honourable member for Hume—

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