Page 2419 - Week 06 - Thursday, 10 May 2012
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the arms race. If you oppose this amendment, you are declaring that we are all going out and buying our own electoral ICBMs. That is what you are doing.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for Police and Emergency Services and Minister for the Environment and Sustainable Development) (7.34): The partisan nature of Mrs Dunne’s amendment is laid bare in the comments she just made tonight. She made it very clear just then that the purpose of this amendment is to hobble her political opponents. That is what she said. She was quite blatant about it. She said, “The Labor Party has affiliated unions and we want to stop them supporting the Labor Party.”
This is not about the partisan advantage that Mrs Dunne is seeking to achieve through this amendment tonight. This is about recognising that trade unions participate in the political environment in their own right. They may be affiliated with the Labor Party. Some of them are; some of them are not. But we know that trade unions participate in political debate in their own right and trade unions are quite happy to criticise the Labor Party if they believe the Labor Party is not doing what they believe is in their members’ interests.
Trade unions make donations to other political parties. We know that trade unions, for example, have made political donations to our political opponents like the Greens. This highlights that trade unions are independent actors in the political environment. They are legitimate players in the social democratic debate. It is wrong of Mrs Dunne to seek to try and tie them to expenditure on the part of the Labor Party. They are not part of the Labor Party. They are separate entities. They engage in political debate on their own terms and they should not be treated in the way that Mrs Dunne seeks to do tonight for her base political advantage.
MR COE (Ginninderra) (7.36): Not only is this amendment—and, indeed, the entire bill if this amendment is successful—unfair but also it is quite impractical. What we are going to have is a situation whereby, as Mrs Dunne says, an independent candidate who puts their name on the ticket, who takes a risk in being a candidate and puts their family on the line, can spend $90,000. Meanwhile the CFMEU, who do not have a name on the ticket, can spend $120,000. That, to me, is absolutely absurd. You have an independent who has taken a risk and put their name on the ticket who can spend $90,000. Meanwhile the CFMEU, who do not have a name on the ticket, can spend $120,000.
That is absolutely absurd. It is unfair. It is another example of Labor and the Greens gerrymandering yet another bill to suit their political ends. It is very interesting that in New South Wales the Liberals and the Greens came together to form an agreement whereby affiliated unions would be included in a cap. The Greens in New South Wales, perhaps some of the most radical Greens of all, came together with the New South Wales Liberal Party to form a decision whereby affiliated unions would come under that cap.
Why is it that the brothers and sisters in the territory of that same clan suddenly think it is immoral, just about, for unions to be included as an affiliated organisation under the cap? Because of their selfish political ends. It has nothing to do with good
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