Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

This report and this inquiry by the Education and Employment References Committee show the high farce that this Senate chamber has turned into. It is the practice of the Senate that, when bills are brought into this chamber, they are referred to a committee of the Senate to look at. That is what happened in this case. The bill was referred to the appropriate committee, which is the Education and Employment Legislation Committee. That committee looked into the report, it looked into the bill and it recommended that the bill be passed.

That is the procedure. But because the Greens and the Labor Party control the numbers in the Senate, the Greens and the Labor Party realised that the legislation committee would look at it thoroughly, would come to a balanced and unbiased decision on the legislation and would accept the need for unions to be honest and to use their members' money honestly.

But the Labor Party and the Greens did not want to attack the groups that sponsor all of the Labor senators in this place. So they referred the same bill to another committee of the Senate, on which the Labor Party and the Greens have a majority. They did this so that they could bring in a report saying that this bill should not be passed. That is my first objection.

The second inquiry was a complete waste of the Senate's time and resources because it was an inquiry into exactly the same subject that another committee of the Senate had already spent time and money appropriately looking into. If we go to the substantive issue—what this is all about—it is saying to the union movement: 'You should have the same standards of accountability to your members, to the people who contribute money to you, as public companies have.' Who could possibly argue with that? I just heard a spurious argument that I am still trying to understand: public companies use the money of shareholders, contributors, to make a profit so that makes them different to a group of people who contribute money to a union that is supposed to be looking after their affairs but may not be doing so. If it is good enough for shareholders' money to be looked after by having certain standards, certain procedures and certain requirements in place for the honest operation of those public companies, why does it not apply to the unions?