Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business) Share this | Hansard source

I've just heard a diatribe from one of the members about the magnificence of the Albanese government. The case that has been put forward is that everything that they touch turns to sunshine and gold, and everything that the coalition wants to do is a problem. In fact, a question was consistently asked over and over and over again: what do people who want to see inflation come down—that means lower interest rates—wish to remove from the budget? I don't know why Labor members keep asking this question, because we have answered it consistently.

We absolutely believe that $15 billion of Australian taxpayers' money should not flow from Treasury coffers into the CFMEU-Labor cartel of corruption. We absolutely believe that that money going towards organised crime and bikie gangs—it's laundered into marketing expenses and, eventually, donations to the Labor Party—is not just a matter of criminal activity or laundering of money. It's an issue of moral importance for this country because Australians are paying the cost; it's financed mostly through debt. This is the morality of this Labor government. They literally borrow from your children's future, stoke up inflation on Australian households today and then, of course, force you to pay higher interest rates so they can finance organised crime, they can finance bikie gangs and they can finance money that goes through a sophisticated CFMEU-Labor cartel all the way through to corruption. I'm completely happy to say that I believe that should be cut out of the budget, because I think it's a moral crime, a political crime, a breach of trust and a form of corruption. And every Labor member, unfortunately, through the sophisticated system of CFMEU-Labor corruption, stands to gain. I'm shocked that they want to keep asking this question, but, as we all know, it was detailed yesterday in a report that was handed down by the Prime Minister's hand picked CFMEU administrator. The title kind of gives it away. The title is Rotting from the top.

On the CFMEU in Victoria, what has been revealed—and we all know this—is that Victorian premier Jacinta Allan, in particular, has knowingly allowed and tolerated public money going into public projects to then go on and finance organised crime. It's extraordinary, and not a single member on the Labor benches seems the least bit bothered by it, but we know why. It's because, when the money goes from organised crime and bikie gangs to the benefits of the CFMEU, it finds its way also into Labor Party coffers. This isn't some sort of contest or debate. Once it was revealed that bikie gangs and organised crime were actively engaged with the CFMEU to extract cartel kickbacks, the Prime Minister had the audacity to say to the Australian people that the Labor Party would no longer receive cartel kickbacks and donations from the CFMEU.

Last week, there were revealed AEC disclosures which went through what political parties received what donations in what timeframe, and there was a donation in the tens of thousands of dollars from the CFMEU to the Australian Labor Party. Some of the members sitting on the other side of the chamber right now are part of that division that enjoyed the benefits, and they're nodding along as I say it. I would not be proud of saying that to the members opposite. I would be embarrassed and ashamed and repudiating not just the conduct of your state secretary but also the Prime Minister for continuing to tolerate the CFMEU-Labor cartel of corruption. It is the most disgraceful thing I think I have ever seen in this parliament's history, yet the members opposite do not even bat an eyelid. They seem enthusiastic and almost nod along.

Let's go through the report that was eventually provided by the CFMEU administrator to the Watson inquiry into criminal activity, violence and corruption in the CFMEU in Queensland. The report identified a number of key factors that drove the corruption within the CFMEU connected to the Labor Party: the open and deliberate defiance of the law; how the big build in Victoria, and big money in Victoria in particular, became the liquidity for the corruption that financed the CFMEU-Labor cartel kickbacks that went all the way into the Labor Party's coffers; how they actively sought to undermine the practices of other unions who were trying to do the right thing for their advantage; and, of course, the individuals involved.

You just need to go through the subheadings and the headlines in this report. The first one is 'Introduction'. Well, that's very administratively justified. The second one is 'Power and corruption'. The third one is 'Violence'. The fourth one is 'Threats and extortion'. The fifth one is 'Systemic corruption'. It goes into 'The introduction of the outlaw motorcycle gangs' and 'Manipulating the enterprise bargaining system'—you know, that industrial relations system that Labor loves and sets up to advance the liquidity in the cartel kickback scheme of the CFMEU-Labor cartel of corruption. There's 'Manipulating the rise of labour hire', meaning they actively undermined people being able to be contracted onto work unless it suited them and bribes were paid. There's 'The appointment of unwanted and unnecessary delegates', meaning costs for public projects went up to feed the union and its corruption. There's 'The appointment of friends and family to lucrative jobs'. Let's just call that 'nepotism and corruption'. There's 'The Building Industry 2000 slush fund'. That just talks about one slush fund; we know that the CFMEU separately uses its own redundancy fund to facilitate cash flows to corrupt other institutions as well.

Then there's a whole chapter just on ad hoc corruption. You've got threats of extortion and systemic corruption. Then we have a chapter exclusively on outlaw motorcycle gangs. Then, of course, there's one on enterprise bargaining agreements. The subchapter to that is on bribery. The subchapter to that is on the black market—the buying and selling of EBAs, where, essentially, rights on worksites were used to trade and get ill gotten gains which found their way through the CFMEU-Labor cartel of corruption into Labor Party coffers. Then we had awarding EBAs to friends. I think that's considered the discount chapter. There were third-party EBA brokers. That's, obviously, people who clip the ticket along the way in EBAs being sold off through the CFMEU-Labor cartel of corruption. Then we got one which was excluding enemies from EBAs. That's basically people who stood in the way of the corruption. Then there's another subchapter on misuse and abuse of social procurement schemes. In every single thing they touched, they found a way to steal money from taxpayers. Then there's misuse and abuse of Aboriginal business EBAs, so don't think there's any virtue sitting behind their trying to advance the best for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. The CFMEU-Labor cartel of corruption looks at Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders as a pathway to indulge their practice of corruption further.

Then you have labour hire. Is money the root of the problem? Well, that's pretty obvious. How wide was the corruption spread? I'll give you an answer: pretty wide. It was systemic across the entire industry. In fact, I think I used the expression yesterday 'industrial scale'. Then we have a whole section just on ghost shifts. That's people getting paid and not doing anything. Then we have organised crime, crime figures and criminals favoured by the CFMEU. Another subject chapter could be called 'organised crime methods associated with the CFMEU'. Then there's a whole section—and you can't but laugh because there's literally nothing else you could say—called 'a crossover with the tobacco wars'. You have organised crime financing a tax on small businesses engaging in the practice of illegal tobacco. We know exclusively where this money goes—not just into organised crime and not just into criminal gangs but actually into terrorism to do things like finance the Iranian government's state sponsored terrorism and antisemitism to blow up Australian synagogues. The cartel kickback circle of life that sits at the heart of the CFMEU-Labor project is nothing short of disgraceful and finances crime. It is connected to organised crime and bikie gangs and is complicit in financing domestic terrorism. One of the Labor members on the other side of this chamber, when I mentioned it before, nodded along.

I don't know about you, Deputy Speaker, but I accept that from time to time we have differences of opinion in this chamber. But when you actually get an independent report from an independently commissioned entity to look into a systemic issue of organised crime and corruption, maybe you shouldn't whitewash it. Maybe, if you were part of the CFMEU-Labor cartel of corruption, you'd probably want to know about it, and you'd probably want to make sure that it was stopped. But yesterday, in the lead-up to question time, I simply asked to table the report so that it could never be whitewashed again, and the Leader of the House objected to me doing so. I can't understand why on earth you would want to stop this report being published let alone make sure—as unfortunately we found happened—independent corruption investigators are asked to delete sections of the report. We know it took the Wood inquiry in Queensland to have this report made public, because the minister wouldn't release it. We wrote to her. We asked for copies. We FOI'd it. We wrote to the Fair Work Commission; we asked for copies and FOI'd them. But everybody seemed to want to be part of the cover-up. This is not governance in the best interests of Australia.

What we have is a systemic problem of corruption that's connected all the way from the CFMEU-Labor cartel of corruption back, ultimately, to the Australian government. Worse than that, in the meantime, in Victoria and nationally, we have anticorruption commissions who seem to not want to see this corruption, hear about this corruption, speak of this corruption or, frankly, do anything about this corruption, because it is hiding in plain sight and it connects directly back to the Australian government and the Allan Labor government in Victoria.

There is another way. We have a choice as a nation about the type of country we want to be. We can choose an alternative path led by a united coalition government that wants to stamp out the CFMEU-Labor cartel of corruption and stop the kickbacks, and I can tell you some of us are willing to fight for it. After I lost in 2022, people said I was done and that, to win again, circumstances were impossible, but we won because we fought for the community and their future. The Liberal Party's situation now is no different. The Australian people passed judgement on the energy and the focus of our economic strategy at the last election. You reveal what you stand for by what you fight for, but, more importantly, you reveal who you're for by who you fight for. We need someone with a proven track record of turning an impossible situation into an improbable victory, because we know who we are fighting for. We know we're fighting for the Australian people—for families, for small businesses and for communities. We want an Australia that we love that's built on respect, where hard work pays off and Australians are in control of their lives. Making history requires leadership, and I can see a path where we can deliver that and build a better nation. History is there to be made, but critical to that is expelling the Labor CFMEU cartel of corruption, the taint it leaves on the Australian government and the Australian parliament, and, of course, the cost to the Australian people.

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