Page 1151 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 6 April 2016
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
Of course, Mr Barr has his hands tied a bit, in that the CFMEU run the Labor Party or the left faction. We know this. Mr Barr knows this. The former Chief Minister Jon Stanhope knows this. We know that some branch presidents in the party are controlled by the CFMEU and then get delegates to conferences and so on. We know that the sub-branch president in the Dickson sub-branch—I think that is where Mr Barr lives—was a CFMEU organiser who pleaded guilty to blackmail. My understanding—please correct me if I am wrong—is that he was replaced with another CFMEU organiser, as a delegate who makes decisions about who gets pre-selected and what policy will be in the Labor Party.
Unfortunately, through what we have seen through this MOU, through what we have seen from the words from those opposite, this is not an ethical government. This is not a government that acts with integrity. This is not a government that is independent. This is a government that is in the pockets of the CFMEU and UnionsACT. It has divested control to those organisations. That then directly benefits those organisations so that those organisations can wield influence and power within the Labor Party and pay an enormous amount of money to the Labor Party to support the Labor Party politically.
The Labor Party have been successful politically. We know that. We know that they run enormous political campaigns. We know that they are supported by the union movement in those campaigns. They have been politically successful. But we have a situation where you have one party that is funded by tens of thousands of dollars that they have got indirectly from workers through the pokies; from businesses through EBAs; and through extra money being paid on government contracts, essentially laundered through the CFMEU to get paid to this government—money that this government can then use for their own political advertising. We will see massive smear campaigns directed at me and my colleagues, from UnionsACT. We will see doorknocking campaigns from the unions out there, pushing the Labor Party. Those organisations know that they stand to benefit financially, and they stand to benefit in terms of power. That is what this is all about.
Let me look at what the Canberra Times editorial has said. I think it is an independent paper that has looked at this. This is the conclusion that it has come to:
… the allegations are telling evidence of the MOU’s real purpose: entrenchment of union power over employers by state writ. Long-standing it may be, but no amount of deflection or redirection will change that unsavoury fact—
that the deal between the state government and UnionsACT does not smell right.
When we have those sorts of observations, and the observations by many in the community, when we have a former Labor Chief Minister talking about the centralisation of power and the unions having corrupted their party, and then we see this MOU, we see this disgusting attempt to try to pretend this is about workers’ safety when my colleagues have clearly demonstrated through evidence that it is anything but, then it is difficult to disagree with Mr Jon Stanhope that this is a corrupted party.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video