Leon Rebello (McPherson, Liberal National Party) | Hansard source

What that ideological sermon failed to do was speak about half of this bill, the Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Building Cooperative Workplaces No. 1) Bill 2026. It spoke about only one part, which was very convenient, and it's the part of this legislation that is non-controversial. I say to those opposite that you should be absolutely ashamed of what you're trying to do. You're bringing the CFMEU to Canberra, and this is all about politics. It's all politics, despite the fact that we've got a prime minister, a treasurer and a government who have continuously said that they're going to do politics differently and that they're going to work in the interests of the Australian people. It's all rubbish, and we're seeing that today in this legislation.

The coalition has long said that it will support practical reforms that help the Fair Work Commission deal with its workload. There are some serious issues that the Fair Work Commission has encountered over the last couple of years, and part of this legislation is designed to address that. But the government shouldn't be using those sensible Fair Work Commission reforms as cover for passing other, unrelated, procurement changes that are going to mean Australians and the Australian taxpayer are worse off. The bill should be split.

I don't know how many times I've come into this chamber in the 12 months that I've been here and had this same conversation, time and time again, where the government finds some legislation that they know is going to have support from the opposition because it's reasonable. And what do they do? They find something that is going to give them a political strategic benefit or ideological advantage and put it through the same legislation and try and ram it through the parliament. That's what we're seeing here today.

Let's talk about the process. The Parliament of Australia is a place of debate, and it should be a debate that is free flowing. It should be a debate where we consider the detail of what is proposed by the government of the day. But what did we see yesterday? We saw the Leader of the House come in here and announce a suspension motion which, in effect, guillotines debate on the bill. It wasn't only relevant to this bill, but it also contained a series of gags on other controversial legislation.

How does this compare to what the Prime Minister has said in the past about how he's going to do business differently and how he's going to conduct himself as Prime Minister of this country? In his very first press conference, the Prime Minister said:

I look forward to leading a Government that makes Australians proud. A Government that doesn't seek to divide, that doesn't seek to have wedges …

In his very first caucus address as Prime Minister, he said:

We want to be more inclusive. We want to make sure there's less shouting and more delivery. The former government sat around and talked about how to wedge the other side of politics.

There's a theme here. As opposition leader, even before he came into government, in relation to our side of politics he said:

He doesn't have legislation. He has wedge-islation.

They sit around the Cabinet, they don't think about the national interest.

Something must have happened when this prime minister was elected. What's happened is we've got a prime minister who said one thing before and who did the exact opposite afterwards. It's not just in relation to process that he does that. It's also in relation to policy. We've seen that in its finest form, as a case study, after the most recent budget: the Prime Minister went to the Australian people no fewer than 50 times saying he wasn't going to make changes to negative gearing policy in this country, and what did he do? He made those changes and he looked down—

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