Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Immigration and Border Protection) Share this | Hansard source

Colleagues! Colleagues! Colleagues, please: let's get this on the record, so Senator Lines can respond. Senator Lines's union, United Voice, currently sponsors no less than nine subclass 457 visa workers in their offices. Of course then we have the Maritime Union of Australia—who are consistently defended by Senator Sterle in this place—great haters of overseas labour, who have sponsored a number of 457 workers.

But the hypocrisy and duplicity of Labor and the union movement does not end there. Who can forget Tony Sheldon of the TWU, who said that the use of 457 workers was a form of slavery? Senator Conroy, Senator Sterle and Senator Gallacher: you will be very pleased to know that the TWU has also sponsored a number of 457 workers despite the fact that this is a form of slavery.

Of course, not to leave out others: the Australian Workers' Union, the Finance Sector Union and the National Tertiary Education Union have all sponsored 457 workers in the past five years—hypocrisy at its very best.