Mr ROB MITCHELL (McEwen) (15:28): I'll tell you what, if stupidity were flight, that contribution would be done by a squadron of jet fighters. You've never seen anything so pathetic in your life in this place. The Labor Party is connected with unions—unbelievable! Mr Hogan: You're a fool! Mr ROB MITCHELL: The ridiculousness of that fool over there to come in here and carry on about all this stuff when they have nothing to stand by. Mr Hogan: You're a— The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Dr Freelander ): The member for Page! Mr ROB MITCHELL: Ten years of that government delivered nothing but low wages. Mr Hogan: You're an insulting fool! Stop your insults! The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Dr Freelander ): Order! This is not a two-way conversation. Mr ROB MITCHELL: Oh, seriously. If I throw a stick, will you go and catch it? They had 10 years of deliberate policy to stagnate and lower wages, and they still do it today. Even the member opposite scurrying out of the chamber wants to do nothing but cause division and chaos, because that's all they know. They couldn't do anything about working together and delivering things. Let's think about the government that we've taken over from and what they did. We had 10 years of a government that kept wages low, 10 years of division and 10 years of doing everything they could to suppress the ability of Australians to pay their bills and get a better life. They hate aspiration. They sit there and use these terms like 'union thugs'. Let's think about it—union thugs. They were happy to stand here over the last couple of years and say: 'Aren't they great, our nurses, who we send out there and make work during a pandemic? And the people delivering food to the stores?' With our truck drivers, they fought against a road safety tribunal to deliver proper wages and conditions for the people that carry this country. They just hate workers. There is nothing more they like than to see workers suppressed so they can sit back and feel superior, but in fact they are very inferior to the people that went out there, joined unions and worked together. Collective bargaining is so important. I can remember when I worked at Mercedes-Benz. A 16-year-old kid came in to become an apprentice. He had to sit there with the entire might and negotiate and bargain with one of the largest companies in the world's HR department, lawyers and managers. That's why you have a union representative there. Unions fought to give those guys overalls, toolkits, safety and all the other things that matter to Australian workers right across this nation, but they sit there proudly saying, 'We should be against that.' It beggars belief that someone can come into this place and claim to be as intelligent as they do but then sit there and fight against the idea of protecting people and giving them safe workplaces. Yes, we're getting rid of the ABCC, and a damn good decision it is, because it has done nothing to improve health and safety. You have got to ask: what is it you've got against stickers on helmets? How does that impact the economy or destroy the nation, if somebody puts a sticker on their helmet? But that's the pettiness you have in this modern rump of a leftover coalition we have sitting there. You think about everything they've fought against over the last 10 years. They fought against wage theft. They were quite happy to see people get their wages illegally docked and do nothing about it. They fought against collective bargaining. They've done that all the way through. Mr Broadbent: That is rubbish. Mr ROB MITCHELL: 'That is rubbish'—seriously? They've fought against improving safety in workplaces on every single occasion. I say this now: why would anyone with any modicum of intelligence and support that party over there when at every single opportunity—and we'll go back to the previous member's views; even back in the eighties with the Industrial Relations Commission and then the Fair Work Commission—it has done nothing but fight against every single attempt to improve the wages and conditions of working Australians? It's in their DNA to fight against it, because all they can do is attack people on low and middle incomes. We saw that through the last tax cuts. Remember those? You wouldn't give low and middle-income earners tax cuts unless you could give the high-income earners one. That was what you fought for vehemently. You couldn't find time to bring an anticorruption commission in; we know why. But you fought against supporting Australian workers on low and middle incomes getting tax cuts. So the next time you sit there and talk about union thugs, think about those people in the hospitals, the cleaners, the people who have worked their backsides off day and night through this pandemic, the people that deliver the food and the people that look after child care to keep this country running while you sit there your backside and attack them. Your own leader was a former union member. He was a member of the police association. Do you call him a union thug? He's not a member of the union now, so you can still call him a thug but not a union member. Each and every one of these organisations works hard and fights strong for Australian families and workers, and you should be ashamed for bringing this to parliament. (Time expired)