Tim Wilson
Goldstein · Liberal Party · Australia
“Now, we see even more immoral leadership as the Prime Minister and his ministers refuse to audit whether federal money has found its way into the hands of organised crime through the CFMEU Labor cartel.”
“The silence that we heard from our prime minister and our national leaders every step of the way led to horrific incidents like, on 10 November, the protests at the front of Central Shule in Caulfield South in the Goldstein electorate. It led eventually to the most horrific terrorist incident on our most famous national beach.”
“The idea that you would put the social solidarity of the most marginalised section of our community on a ballot paper knowing it would fail is an abrogation of leadership and responsibility and something I do not think this prime minister will ever be able to shake.”
“I've recently been spending a lot of time thinking about what moral government is and what type of government seeks to divide citizens, feed corruption and break trust within the community. The short and sharp of it is that it's an immoral government.”
“But to engage in citizenship stacking, where they deliberately went around and targeted electorates and got people to become Australian citizens on the eve of a national poll, is absolutely disgraceful.”
“There is hope. We can have a moral government again that's focused on uniting Australians and building trust and taking Australia forward together. But the only way we can do that is by seeing a change of government and the end of the Albanese government.”
The complete record
Every one of 1,081 lines we hold for Tim Wilson, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 13 of 22.
“There was something structurally wrong deep within the culture of the CFMEU for one reason: that the Albanese government took the CFMEU off the leash as a result of the abolition of the ABCC. Ever since then, we've had a continuing problem with the CFMEU. We have had issues of corruption directly at the heart of our democracy, and there needs to be proper accountability and responsibility. We've seen this very directly in recent weeks, where there have been a number of whistleblowers who have come out publicly and said that the situation of corruption in the CFMEU has got worse since it's been put in administration. As a consequence, we now have a situation where we have referred the matter to a Senate inquiry to properly investigate the issues around CFMEU corruption.”
“I move: The motion was unavailable at the time of publishing. We have a fundamental problem at the heart of the Australian democracy right now, where we have a union that is operating beyond the law. This isn't my opinion; this is an opinion of the whistleblowers of the CFMEU. We know full well that the administration was established more than 15 months ago by the Albanese government, shortly after there were deep, serious allegations of cartel kickbacks from graft connected to Australian organised crime, criminal gangs and bikie gangs on public projects—that the government put the CFMEU in administration because they believed that there was something structurally wrong.”
“That means we build a better future for children and our grandchildren and we do not hand to them a state of silence, as the Albanese government would like to achieve. We stand for a nation that is built on structures and the protection of accountability, and that means making sure we stop these types of bad laws.”
“It is about making sure they are properly informed, that they are properly respected and that people have input into the processes of government. It is the right of every Australian to ask challenging and difficult questions to their government. I hate to break this to the members of the government: the people have a government; it is not the other way around. Citizens have a government; it is not the other way around. We are not your serfs. Our job is not to comply. Your job is not to control the citizens of this country. It comes down to a simple proposition: we face choices. The choice is simple. I fundamentally believe that we should have legislation that improves this country and the governance framework that we have.”
“We don't need to indulge the fantasies of the Albanese government and those who wilfully come into this chamber with the delusion of thinking they are doing the right thing, when in fact they are entrenching the corrupt government system they claim they are seeking to oppose. We have choices as a nation about the type of country we want to be, and we want to be one focused on making sure there is transparency, accountability and decision-making, because it is important not just for the ministers but for the bureaucrats themselves that they understand through the systems of government there is accountability for their decision-making. Nobody should be embarrassed by the process of making decisions.”
“We have increasing bureaucracy and legal complexity deliberately designed to obfuscate and make it more complicated to be able to find information, and for what purpose apart from the secrecy this government seeks to impose? There is a better way. We can conserve the existing laws. There is no national security threat despite the pontificating of the Prime Minister, who has come back from overseas and too often is trying to find justifications to shut down accountability around this parliament, the government and the operations of the Commonwealth of Australia. We can have a better way. We can have laws that work to enable access to information, that give people access to the information they need to be able to hold this government to account.”
“The one surefire way to guarantee that is to shut them down and limit access and accountability, to make it even harder for agencies to be held accountable not just from the public and journalists but from ministers themselves, certainly from parliamentary processes. If the minister and members opposite were so enthused and so enthralled by standing up for public scrutiny and accountability, the first thing they could do is start by saying that a lot of these rules simply should not apply to those people elected to public office to hold the government specifically to account, and certainly to journalists whose job it is to shine bright lights into very dark crevices. But let's face it, nobody wants to know what is going on in the dark crevices of this government.”
“It goes directly against the proposition this government came to office in, saying they would have integrity and be fulsome in providing information to the public. We all know that is complete fantasy now. It was a proposition put at the time but nobody actually believes that. I don't think they even believe it themselves, but I would not want to verbal them; they should just be ashamed by their conduct. More importantly, what the legislation actually does is damage public trust, because around this country we have so many Australians that already have deep distrust in institutions.”
“In practice, it is a backdoor attack on our democracy and it needs to be called out because it will reward delay and dysfunction at every step of the way. It lacks public support. I have yet to find a single person outside this Albanese government who supports it. Nobody is coming up to me in the street and saying, 'I really support how the government is shutting down freedom of information. I think it is a wonderful thing.' Not a single person has said that; though people have said the reverse. People have said, 'I don't think it's a good idea.' Journalists, members of the opposition, members of the crossbench, anybody who has actually thought about what this government are doing in their insidious agenda have said it.”
“When you have a truth tax, when you have silencing and the limiting of information, and you see the example of their conduct in other arenas such as the CFMEU administration, where the minister still takes advice from somebody who self declares they are so tainted they cannot sit on the national executive of the Labor Party yet they still hold that person as an advisor on the national construction industry forum—and, funnily enough, that minister is still blocking a public inquiry through the Senate into CFMEU corruption into the regime she has established—you start to see the cartel kickback circle of life. This is the problem. This legislation, in theory, is designed to do what the government claim, which is simply to administratively tidy up the law.”
“They're putting caps on the volume of information you're able to secure and the processing times. What a surprise. Do you think it's possible, Deputy Speaker Boyce, they might turn around and simply say, 'I think it's going to take a while for us to process this information in between my coffee break, going to the bathroom, lunch.'? It will get longer and longer and then all of a sudden they will say, 'We can't give that information; it's too long to process.' Get real. The intention of this legislation is clear. The attempt of this government to silence and shut down public scrutiny is real.”
“They do not want these voices to be heard, because they know it's not just getting worse but likely to continue to get worse under this regime. They want to expand secrecy around cabinet advice because apparently there's this explosion of cabinet advice. It's just all around. You can go and pick it up. There are pieces of paper all around. It's all over the place. So they have to try and somehow minimise it. Cabinet advice isn't publicly available. The idea that they need to somehow constrain this further is farcical. They are using it to try and expand it so that now ministers can walk through and say, 'It went through the cabinet room. Now it's cabinet advice, so you can't access it,' to try to continue to create silence and limit the amount of available information.”
“They're imposing new fees and processing caps to try and silence and limit access to journalists so they won't be able to find out information. They're trying to minimise the capacity for people to get information, like whistleblowers and vulnerable applicants, because that's what we really need right now. We need more pathways to silence whistleblowers. Why do you think that might be? Do think it might be because, at the moment, we have whistleblowers who are standing up and calling out the CFMEU and their administration established by Minister Rishworth and calling out that corruption is actually getting worse under the current government's proposal? Their solution is to shut down whistleblowers, to silence dissent and to challenge anybody who stands up and calls out corruption at the heart of this government.”
“There are so many transparency organisations and anticorruption organisations. There's the opposition and the crossbench, who are increasingly seeing the dark face of this government. They're seeing the mask slip when the Prime Minister gets up in question time—when he occasionally answers questions rather than, with a quiver of his lip, shouting abuse back in response. They're starting to see what happens when you have a government that's let the intoxication of power go to its head. It's worse than, let's say, a few beers once you've frozen the excise. What we know is they're shutting down transparency and democratic accountability. I gave an example of what's going on at the local hospital in the federal electorate of Goldstein.”
“The argument that is now being put forward by the Prime Minister is that we have to shut down the pathways of freedom to information for ordinary Australians because there might be things to do with national security and the cabinet. I hate to break it to you, but, if you've ever read the FOI Act, you will know that it already excludes all of the information around our national security. They say that the last resort of a scoundrel is to appeal to national security or patriotism. Well, this government is clearly full of those types of characters. They have simply deceived the public in the hope that they can ram this through and impose their truth tax to shut down and silence information and to cap the volume of information that Australians can get. They ought to be ashamed of themselves. They haven't consulted. They haven't engaged.”
“Do you know when they finally gave out the documents? They finally gave out the documents on the Friday evening after the bureaucrats were forced to admit, before Senate estimates, everything I've just said. They weaponised and they abused freedom of information to hide information until they could hide it no longer. That is what Minister Butler does. That is what the Prime Minister does. They weaponise laws to shut down access to information for the people of Australia. We've now got this piece of legislation, the Freedom of Information Amendment Bill 2025, and we know that the Attorney-General is trying to suffocate and silence what is left of the democracy in our country in terms of access to information. We know that she is trying to deceive the public, and they are using the most fantastical and farcical arguments to get there.”
“They showed the department saying, 'Actually it's quite easy to calculate the cost of bringing forward the MRI licence for Sandringham Hospital because there's no MRI machine.' So what they engaged in was a cruel health hoax that deliberately deceived the people of Goldstein in order to prop up the former member in the hope that they would then go on and get re-elected. It was to help their own electoral fortunes and chances. So does FOI have a place? Yes, it has a role to expose the deception and the dishonesty at the heart of this government and, of course, of any government that seeks to abuse power. The minister was specifically warned. Even worse than that is that the FOI went in many months ago and we waited and waited and waited for an answer. Do you know when they released the answer?”
“So it was with fascination that, during the lead-up to the last federal election, the former member for Goldstein was boasting to the community about how she got this magnificent MRI licence for Sandringham Hospital. I thought, 'That's really odd because, as far as I'm aware, the website alfredhealth.org.au still says it doesn't have an MRI machine. Of course, I then dutifully went to foi@health.gov.au with one of these mischievous FOIs—'How dare people submit?' I asked the basic questions: Could I have the advice that was given to the department at the time? Could you give me information reflecting what their decision-making and their pricing structure were on whether this should be passed? And what did the research and FOI documents actually show?”
“I FOI'd the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing many, many months ago asking for information about an MRI machine at Sandringham Hospital—Sandringham Hospital, of course, being in the federal electorate of Goldstein. I remember, in 2017, when we were last in government, an MRI licence was secured for the federal electorate of Goldstein. Many people said to me: 'Why didn't you get one for Sandringham Hospital? Why did you get it for Cabrini hospital in Brighton?' The answer was because Sandringham Hospital doesn't have an MRI machine. It's not much use getting an MRI licence for a hospital that doesn't have an MRI machine you can use it on.”
“He comes back from the National People's Congress and thinks, 'That would be a really good model to impose on the Parliament of Australia, where people just stand and applaud like trained eunuchs and don't ask or dare raise questions.' And this legislation around freedom of information comfortably fits within that. Anyone who's submitted an FOI under this government or, more importantly, under other Labor governments in the country will know how much, on the surface of it, they talk about integrity and they spin the idea that they're in favour of transparency, but, in practice, they weaponise and use it at every point to try and undermine access to information. I'll give you a classic example of this.”
“The seemingly well-meaning Prime Minister, who likes to have a beer at the pub—although he actually did do that when he was claiming he wasn't doing that, but that's a whole separate issue. In the lead-up to the 2022 election, I remember seeing him explicitly saying one thing in public and doing something completely different, but we'll leave that to one side. Ever since then, what we've seen through the legislation that has been put before this parliament is the mask slipping, and we're increasingly seeing the contemptuous quiver of his lip in a 'how dare you, Australian people, question me?' as he periodically jaunts back in from trips on his Air Force jet between visiting Dan Andrews in Victoria or going overseas.”
“I start by acknowledging the member for Barton and congratulating her on her election to the House. I don't doubt for one second that the spirit in which she offered her remarks was well intentioned and based on the trust that she has in this government. The problem is that that's not actually its practice. I understand when you're a member of the government, particularly when you're new and you want to feel that your government, which you have been elected to support, is trying to do the right thing. But, as always occurs with all governments, eventually its true face is revealed, and what we're seeing more and more with time is the dark face of the Albanese government as the mask slips.”
“Or do we continue to accept the arrogance and indulgence of this government and vote for legislation, ram it through, without any concern for the consequences of its impact—which could very much lead to disastrous consequences for the people of Australia?”
“More importantly, he gets up with his boastfulness and arrogance and throws barbs and sharp lines, which, I've no doubt, make him feel chipper and good in the process, but that isn't necessarily improving the governance of this nation. We all face choices. The choice before the parliament right now is: Do we pass this legislation, or do we review it and improve it? Do we make sure that we get the balance right? Do we make sure that we create the legislation this country so desperately needs, so that environmental regulation can steward the environment, and empower the economy and propel it forward to the future?”
“If you don't, and if the minister gets this wrong, the consequences for the environment could be profound, the consequences for economic development for Australia could be profound and the consequences for Indigenous communities could be profound. But, at the moment, all those calls are falling on deaf ears. That is another emblematic example of the arrogance of the Albanese government and how it has slowly been manifesting since about 3 May, where you see the Prime Minister fly in, as obliged, if he occasionally has to appear before the parliament, to answer at least to the people who are elected by the Australian people. He certainly does it very dismissively, particularly when it's not on topics he likes.”
“The question is why members of the government feel so fixated on and obsessed with wanting to override rational conversation in this legislation. You can see it, going back to question time, where all the ministers get up and praise their Prime Minister. He's obviously got a dirt file that has something on all of them, because there's no other basis that anybody would get up and be so sycophantic. When it comes down to it, the reality is that backbenchers, particularly, have a responsibility to ask basic questions of ministers and, of course, of the legislation they put forward. My recommendations to the minister are to fix the laws, listen to the public, take input and views, and allow a reasonable, proportionate amount of time for 1,500 pages of legislation and explanatory memoranda to be properly considered.”
“Then, of course, there are other important issues, like the extent of offset arrangements that have been established under the legislation to make sure that we conserve the environment, but in a way that encourages and incentivises project development, because in the end that's what we should want as a country. It doesn't really matter how we design the law; we have to make sure that we're stewarding the environment to a better future, but it has to be through acknowledging that we have to manage our challenges for the environment as well. Those groups haven't had their say. So far, they're saying this legislation's a dud. They're saying it's a dud because it actually makes the problems worse, and stakeholders who have had the chance to speak up in the public square are calling out the Albanese government for its ramrod approach.”
“Some of us are going to stand up and speak out about it, because there are important issues that are on the table. From looking at the ministerial discretion that the minister wants in this legislation—and it's pretty wide ministerial discretion, which is raising concerns across the chamber about what the minister will be empowered to do and what the minister will not be empowered to do—to the capacity for this whole process to duplicate what happens in state as well as federal regulation. Instead of streamlining and speeding up the process of environmental regulation, it could have the reverse effect, where it actually increases the burden, the costs and the compliance. Remember, this isn't for some sort of mystical benefit, except for people whose sole purpose is to be paid to process paperwork.”
“How about we have this Senate inquiry? How about we have input from the Australian people? How about we have input from groups like the Business Council, as some members have raised? How about we have input from farmers groups? How about we have input from industry associations? How about we have input from environmental groups too? Well-designed laws will involve consultation. Just because people have input, doesn't mean we're guaranteed to listen to it—or include it, I should say more correctly—but people should be able to have a say in their democracy. How about we have a bit of input in the process? But we haven't seen that. Instead, what we've seen is a bullying approach by this government towards this House of Representatives. Some of us aren't trained eunuchs. Some of us aren't just going to applaud the Prime Minister along.”
“There will be a record about how everybody voted on this bill, but make no mistake: to vote for 1,500 pages of legislation—which I'm willing to bet to a tee that any single member on the government benches has not read, and certainly has not consulted their community. They certainly don't understand the consequences outside of the three-page talking points, no doubt issued by the whip. There has to be a sobriety with this legislation and what it is we need to do. So when the Albanese government continues to treat this House of Representatives and this parliament like the National People's Congress, and thinks we're all just a bunch of applauding eunuchs rather than standing up, speaking out, scrutinising legislation, asking questions, challenging legislation and debating legislation, we know we have a problem.”
“I don't think for one second that when the original Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act was designed anybody thought, 'I know what's going to happen; the Environmental Defender's Office, which the current Albanese government funds, is going to use that act to take action against a gas project, using a dishonest, deceptive and lying campaign on the basis of a mythical, invented, Aboriginal songlines campaign, and use that to take it all the way up to the Federal Court.' I don't think anybody thought that. It's kind of why you have to review legislation and go through the proper process.”
“Meanwhile, we have a process in the Senate which is designed to actually review the laws and give the Australian people—you know them, the people we're supposed to be representing—some input into the process and for them to highlight some of the deficiencies in these laws, which is quite important. I heard the member for Moore before, celebrating the legislation, saying how important it was and how we've just got to smash it through, but seeming completely indifferent to the fact that we need to have a conversation with the Australian people about the consequences. No matter how arrogant a government may be at any given time, every government makes mistakes—in legislative drafting, in unintended consequences, and where they design laws which have a flow-on effect that was not fully appreciated.”
“We can have our debates about what should be included or not included—I fully respect the fact there will be a diversity of views across the crossbenches, the members of government and the opposition. But with what they essentially tabled in the last week, we now have 1,500 pages of legislation with the explanatory memorandum. How on earth is anybody supposed to understand what the practical consequences are for small businesses, the flow-on consequences for large projects and mining? I see the member to my left—what about the impact it's going to have on farmers and her community? How is she supposed to be able to have that conversation and do a proper consultation? This is what this parliament is being asked to vote on.”
“They literally made up Indigenous traditions that didn't exist—even local Indigenous people acknowledged they didn't exist—as a basis to weaponise and shut down gas projects. It is extraordinary that the law would enable them to deceive the public, to lie to the public through a government-funded entity, to try and stop a project on not dubious but deceptive grounds, harming both Indigenous communities and the economic progress of the nation. I think that one case alone has demonstrated that the EPBC Act needs some pretty significant reform, but it has to be done from a position of integrity, trust and balance. It is simply impossible for any member at this point, with the way the government is trying to bully and ram this legislation through the parliament, to have actually gone through it and done the proper work necessary to pass it.”
“In addition, we have environmental laws which are weaponised by people who have no interest in advancing environmental causes. They seek to corrode and attack economic progress. I'm reminded of the recent example of the Environmental Defenders Office. In the Senate there's recently been an inquiry looking at different components of climate misinformation and disinformation. We can debate the relative merits of that inquiry, but I seek not to indulge in that in the context of this legislation. But it never ceases to amaze me that the Greens called for an inquiry into climate misinformation and disinformation, when the most obvious example we have had in this nation's history—and the EPBC Act has been an enabler of this—is the Environmental Defenders Office taking Santos to court.”
“In fact, he shut down question time when I got up to ask a question in question time today—perhaps legitimately, because it went to some very difficult and uncomfortable truths at the dark heart of this Labor government, but we'll leave that to the side. A reality we have is that critical minerals projects, which are desperately needed, could now be 15 to 20 years away simply because this government hasn't got the legislative framework right. The same is true with lots of other mining projects, which we use to grow the bounty and wealth of our nation so that we can afford things like our health system and our education system and so that Australians can get jobs so they can afford to buy their own home and save for their retirement. It's enormously important.”
“It makes us less competitive in the global market and we all pay the price through declining living standards because we're not getting the investment capital we need in an efficient way to grow the future of our economy. So there are plenty of reasons to reform the EPBC Act. That's not in question. We just want it to be done in a balanced and measured way. One of the problems we've got right now is that the government is seeking to ram legislation through and bully the parliament into compliance. As I've said so many times before, the Prime Minister has come back from his visits overseas and wants to treat this parliament like it is the National People's Congress, where nobody dare ask questions.”
“When I say they're expensive, it's not because they cost businesses money. Businesses obviously have an obligation to spend the money necessary to preserve and protect our environment. They're slow and expensive because they delay the potential for investment in our environment in order to harness its bounty and its potential. And it's not just in dollars; it's also in time. It can take decades for mining projects, which we desperately need to start developing now, to come to the table. We have duplicative and overly cumbersome regulation which often replicates activities of state and federal governments for largely little benefit. And, of course, it's slow, and there are huge costs involved. What we end up having is a huge deadweight loss to our economy.”
“Lessons of history show that there is nothing that will corrode the health and wellbeing of the environment more than when people have declining standards of living. When they do, particularly in situations of poverty, they turn to the environment as the point at which they try to improve them. Stewardship is understanding that prosperity and environmental conservation can be in opposition, or they can be intrinsically linked. Good nations design laws that intrinsically link the potential of economic opportunity with stewardship so that we're able to hand down to future generations a better environment than we inherited ourselves. There is one problem with our current environmental framework—multiple problems, in fact. The current laws are slow, cumbersome and expensive.”
“They want a sense of protection and balance to conserve the environment for future generations while building the jobs and economic opportunity for Australians to be able to go on and live successful lives. We are blessed with bounty. We are blessed with opportunity. It's our responsibility to harness that in a way that continues to grow out the economic potential for our nation and for all. To do so requires having a sense of balance in our laws so that we seek to do it in a way that is measured and proportionate and protects our environment, powers our country and propels us forward to be part of contributing to a global economy and to provide the affluence and improvement in standards of living that Australians reasonably expect to enjoy.”
“'Goldstine'. As the member for Goldstein, every time we mention the word 'Goldstein', we're honouring the legacy of the suffragette Vida Goldstein, and that's the basis on which I always correct members. When you think about Australian political history, you have a limited number of Australian political figures who are honoured by the name of electorates, and that includes one of Australia's greatest suffragettes. Apart from when I was doing research for my first speech, where I found an article where she specifically explained how to pronounce her name, and in both of the books that have been published in recent years, You Daughters of Freedom and Vida, where it was explicitly explained how to pronounce her name correctly, it's important to get right. Australians simply want to make sure we have stewardship of our natural environment.”
“I've never seen a time when we've had a government that has been so inept and disinterested in combating open corruption. That's because there are cartel kickbacks that go from CFMEU public projects all the way through to connections to the Labor Party itself. Only last week we had an outrageous situation—”
“We watched as $100 million of local infrastructure funding was ripped out of our community, and what went with it was the financial resources that the City of Bayside and the Glen Eira had to upgrade things like the Wilson Storage oval in Sandringham, McKinnon Reserve and, of course, Brighton Beach Oval. What it meant is that women don't have change room facilities in our community despite election commitments having consistently been made to deliver them. This is the problem. Despite all the rhetoric and all the spin, Labor has failed the Goldstein community, and we are continuing to miss out. Now is the time for us to stand up, because in another six months this Labor government will not have just failed Goldstein; it will have failed Australia.”
“It raises a fundamental issue of trust. Nonetheless, Goldstein made a different choice, because it saw that there was a direct consequence, despite having been told it was going to have a community backed Independent who was going to stand by the community. It watched $100 million worth of social infrastructure ripped out of the community. The member for Maribyrnong, who just gave her speech, boasted about all of the resources that this Labor government is now giving specifically to her community. Well, Goldstein had a very different experience during the last term of parliament.”
“They did things like vote for billions of dollars of new coal and gas subsidies, despite saying they would do other things—as did the member for Wentworth, as did the member for Curtin, as did the member for Kooyong, as did the member for North Sydney and as did the member for Mackellar. When you're campaigning on the basis of trust and then you go and break such a pledge to your community, it is a fundamental breach of trust with the community that will no doubt continue to haunt them for the rest of their political days. Even Senator Joyce and Senator Canavan didn't vote for these subsidies. But you had, at the time, the member for Goldstein, the member for Kooyong, the member for Mackellar, the member for Curtin and the member for North Sydney voting for billions of dollars in new fossil fuel subsidies.”
“At the end of the day, it has not been this massive vote of confidence in Labor government or its direction for our country, because it doesn't have one. There was one seat where things were a little bit different. The seat, of course, in context was the federal electorate of Goldstein. We're enormously proud of what happened in the context of the federal electorate of Goldstein, because what we saw was where hope transcended fear and where a campaign run from local residents standing up for the type of community we wanted to be transcended a lot of the issues that were presented by the former member. It's very important to remember what happened. They campaigned on the basis of trust and climate action, but, as soon as they were elected to office, what happened?”
“Six months ago Australians went to the polls and they weren't sure about the direction of their country. I've said publicly before that, when Australians went to the polls six months ago, they were nervous about their future. They were anxious. They did not feel that their government was necessarily the right government for the nation. But we also, I believe on our side, failed to give Australians a viable alternative. As a consequence, people ultimately made the choice that they felt was available to them. They were forced to vote for a bad government to be re-elected because they had no alternative. That's our failure. It's not something for Labor members to come into this chamber and air punch around and celebrate their incredible victory.”
“Last week—this is how bad it got—the head of Victorian CFMEU, Zach Smith, who lent his numbers to the Prime Minister on their national executive of the Labor Party, self identified that he was sufficiently tainted that he removed himself. When even the corrupt are abandoning ship, you know it's bad. But he is still an adviser to the minister on her National Construction Industry Forum. When we asked her about it in parliament last week, she ran interference. There's no wonder the minister is blocking an inquiry into the CFMEU administration. She still continues to get advice from Zach Smith from the Victorian CFMEU. We need a clear plan to address the shortcomings of this administration. That's why we need an inquiry, and we need Mr Smith out of the way. We need Australians' help.”
“Taxpayers are paying a higher price, and the beneficiaries are criminal gangs, organised crime and bikies. I don't think it should shock anybody, and it amazes me there are Labor members speaking against this motion, but here they are—to be judged by the Australian people and to somehow stand by and say they think this corruption is acceptable. It is not acceptable. Confidence in the administration has collapsed. The minister has strapped herself to the administrator in arguing that this is the strongest possible course of action, but nobody believes it. Three weeks ago, we wrote to her asking basic questions. She won't answer.”
“Veterans that want to work on Victorian big-bill projects have been asked to pay corrupt kickbacks, simply for the right to work, in $10,000 brown paper bags. In Victoria, the CFMEU hires organised crime to attack companies. In New South Wales, contractors hire organised crime to respond to CFMEU thuggery. This is absurd. First home buyers are paying the cost through higher costs for new apartment builds, and the cost is flowing on to CFMEU corruption. Taxpayers are paying an even bigger price through the higher cost of public projects, lower returns and lower value. More importantly, when higher costs go up on public projects, tomorrow, it is debt. In addition to that, it is taxes on future generations. It's all to finance and feed cartel kickbacks to the CFMEU.”