Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tonight I call on the Minister for Workplace Relations, Mr Shorten, to desist from opening the Maritime Union of Australia Conference in Western Australia tomorrow morning. The conference is self-styled, self-described, as having the theme of '140 years of militant struggle'—and I am quoting from their media release. Militancy in the trade union movement is its ugly face. It is the face we have seen on the walls; the face we have seen at the Myer emporium, where workers were intimidated and pleaded with their own union to stop threatening them and where horses were attacked and where police were attacked.

It is the ugly face that we saw at the Queensland Children's Hospital, at Little Creatures Brewery and at City West Water.

Militancy is the combative and aggressive ugly face of trade unionism that gives the vast majority of decent unionists a bad name. But here we have the minister celebrating this ugliness by opening a union conference unabashedly themed around aggression and militancy. After recording an eight-year record high in strikes around Australia and witnessing some of the worst elements of militant unionism, one would have thought that Mr Shorten would not have embraced this militancy and opened this conference. What he will be doing tomorrow morning, if he does not desist, is to give legitimacy to this sort of behaviour. He will be giving an official government imprimatur to this union's militancy.

While workers are showing up to work facing an environment of disgusting thuggery, militancy and intimidation from union bosses, they do not expect the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations to be opening a conference that celebrates this type of militancy and thuggery. Mr Shorten needs to answer a few questions. Does the minister's attendance at a conference celebrating militant trade unions mean that he also supports MUA officials who have circulated posters labelling workers as scabs in direct violation of this Labor government's own Fair Work Act? Will the minister demand that union bosses in the building and construction sector act within the law? Will Mr Shorten call on union bosses to stop commencing illegal picket lines, again in direct violation of Labor's own Fair Work Act—and, might I add, in direct violation of his recent bullying announcement? Importantly, will he accept the important recommendations from his own million-dollar fair work review to plug holes in the Fair Work Act allowing union bosses to engage in this militancy? I doubt it, and we shall see what he does. It is curious, however, that Mr Shorten has in fact been invited to Western Australia when I understand no visa has been provided to the Prime Minister to visit Western Australia until 9 March is over.

Unfortunately, what we have seen from this minister is his incapacity to divorce the ex-union boss that he is from his task as the minister of the Crown responsible for matters workplace relations. This is a minister who thinks that his ministerial post is somehow an upmarket extension of his former task as a trade union boss. Indeed, recently at that quite bizarre gathering of the Australian Workers Union, where we saw the singing of Solidarity ForeverI am sure it warmed the cockles of the hearts of certain people in North Korea and Cuba, but I am not sure it has a lot of relevance for Australia in 2013—the minister said:

I am very proud to carry in the Parliament of Australia every day my union membership card.

As a minister of the Crown, one of the obligations is to put those things aside. When I became Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation I even resigned my membership of Timber Communities Australia, because I did not want anybody to assert that I had a conflict of interest. When I became the shadow minister for innovation, industry, science and research I ensured that I was no longer a member of any chamber of commerce, because I did not want to be seen as having a potential conflict of interest. But here is a minister completely brazen about what he sees his role as—that is, just an extension of his former job as national secretary of the Australian Workers Union. Then he came up with a lame excuse in the speech: 'I will say it again: I am pro-union.' He went on to say: 'I am also pro-family. I am also pro-employer and pro-business.'

If that is the case, where is his membership card of the Australian Family Association? Where is his membership card of some chamber of commerce and industry? Of course, he does not have those membership cards, but his union membership card, the fact that he was secretary of the Australian Workers Union? Yes, he should celebrate that; yes, he should be proud of that. We all come into this place and into ministerial roles with our backgrounds—that is part and parcel of this place. But when you become a minister you have to put that background behind you and act in the national interest. You cannot front up to a union conference, wave your union card and say: 'Every day I act like a trade union official when I am in the parliament and as minister for workplace relations.' You have to rise above it, and that is something that Mr Shorten has failed to do time and time again since his appointment.

Now we have this latest escapades where the minister is fronting the Maritime Union of Australia's national conference with the theme of celebrating 140 years of militant struggle. The dictionary tells me that militancy is about aggressiveness and combativeness, not about negotiation, not about resolution of issues, not about discussion. This is about militancy and celebrating militancy.

When I asked a question on notice of the minister, because he at one stage had referred to 'bad apples' or 'bad trade unions' in an interview, I asked him to provide all the examples that he meant by that. He could only bring himself to mention the Health Services Union. Really? Why could he not comment on the CFMEU drug and alcohol foundation rort that has just recently been exposed in New South Wales, where money has been gathered just like the Australian Workers Union scandal that the Prime Minister involved herself in—either wittingly or unwittingly, I am willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. Where is Mr Shorten on that? No mention of the Australian Workers' Union scandal as an indication of trade unionism gone bad. No mention of the CFMEU drug and alcohol foundation as an indication of trade unions that have gone bad. No mention of the Electrical Trade Union's waterside mansion for an official in Sydney as an indication of trade unionism gone bad. This is, regrettably, simply another case of Mr Shorten not been able to divorce himself from his former role as a trade union boss.

In the concluding moments could I simply again request that Mr Shorten desist from attending the MUA conference, and he might like to consider his role as minister requiring him to repudiate trade union militancy and all its associated ugliness. That is why he should not be attending tomorrow morning at the MUA conference.