Mary Aldred (Monash, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Something is rotten in the state of Victoria, and it's starting to infect Labor federally. Something is rotten in the state of Victoria when, over a long period of time, you've got such a significant undermining of public confidence in public institutions and in government integrity, which has become so much worse under Daniel Andrews and since his tenure.

I only need to look at how state government ministers treat this issue. I go back to 30 September last year. Australia's worst energy minister, Lily D'Ambrosio, was asked about an IBAC survey on the perception of corruption, and she waved reporters away and was extremely flippant. She said she was more interested in community perceptions, but the reality was that nearly 90 per cent of MPs in the Victorian state parliament were worried about corruption, and the figure was a bit less than that for local government councillors. That is one example of how prolific some of these issues are. We're not talking about some minor infractions here. We are dealing with some pretty profound issues—$15 billion didn't just vanish. It was siphoned off while the government looked the other way. We're talking about strippers being brought into a workplace. In what other workplace or office in Australia would that be acceptable? That's what's happening in Victoria.

This is not incompetence; it's wilful ignorance. I read today about a contract that was taken out on the administrator when he was appointed. This is really serious stuff. We read about this sort of thing internationally. We like to think it doesn't happen here in Australia, but it does when it comes to the CFMEU, and it's allowed to flourish under a Labor federal government that is not prepared to toughen up and deal with it. We're talking about organised crime figures buying and selling workplace agreements. I note that, at the moment, we're paying something like $500,000 a minute on government debt. Every dollar lost to corruption is a hospital bed not funded, a road not fixed, a school not repaired. But that's the Victorian government. That's Labor in Victoria, which has infected Labor federally. The standard that you choose to walk past is the same one that you choose to accept.

It's also impacting regional communities and small businesses. I'll give you an example. In my electorate of Monash, there are many family-run building SMEs. They do a terrific job. They employ young people. They give tradies a go. We've got a wonderful local workforce, but, so often, I speak to them about skills and labour shortages. These corruption issues in Melbourne that relate to the CFMEU have profound, ongoing and institutional consequences for the rest of the building sector and for small businesses, who are expected to abide by a very high level of compliance and regulatory standards. Clearly, the CFMEU are not. There are some really profound flow-on impacts here.

The member for Goldstein has done an outstanding job in holding a light to systemic corruption. The Age, which is not exactly the bastion of conservative publishing, has been like a dog with a bone on this issue, and I commend the bravery and the persistence of reporters like Nick McKenzie, because we need to get to the bottom of this. We need to see a report that is not redacted. If you are serious about standing up to corruption, putting out that report in full without bits and pieces taken out, redacted and blacked out is important. It's important to get to the bottom of why bikie gangs were running building sites. We need to know what is happening from here on in with that report, with cleaning up union corruption and with CFMEU donations to the Labor Party, because Australians deserve so much better.

See this speech in context