Minister for Child Safety and CFMEU speech

My speech today on the Minister for Child Safety’s refusal to call out her union masters in the CFMEU:

As a mother, I am disgusted to think that another woman would sit in silence while CFMEU thugs make vicious threats of violence and rape against children. What makes that worse is that the woman in question is the Minister for Communities, Women and Youth, Minister for Child Safety and Minister for the Prevention of Domestic and Family Violence in Queensland. What have we heard from Shannon Fentiman following those threats to rape children, bash people with crowbars and physically harm others because they do not bow to their demands? Nothing! The silence is deafening.

It seems that silence can be bought if you are a member of the Labor Party and the unions are willing to open their pockets for you. I cannot believe that I am forced to make this call to the minister for women and child safety. The minister has a duty to call out the despicable comments by the CFMEU or explain why she will not. The standard you walk past is the standard you accept and it is clear that she is willing to let this abhorrent act slide. What makes that even worse is that it is Sexual Violence Awareness Month, a month when we are supposed to promote the support options available to people affected by sexual assault and sexual abuse. Instead, we get the complete opposite from the minister. I wonder what the 1,870 people reported to have been raped in the past 12 months would say to those threats?

This minister is a fraud. She feigns outrage when a woman or child is threatened in a violent situation, but we are yet to hear that rehearsed sigh in front of the TV cameras because this involves her union mates. The real question is this: why? Why will she not speak up for the children against whom those threats were made? Where is the Minister for Child Safety whose job it is to call out that type of abuse and condemn it? Does the minister think it is okay for her union masters to use such violent and degrading threats against innocent children? I wonder if she called out and condemned sexual violence against children when she addressed the hundreds of construction workers last December as part of the CFMEU Family Violence Awareness National Week of Action. I table a photo.

The reality is that, like most of her Left colleagues, she is not just beholden to her union masters; she is owned by them. She dare not bite the hand that feeds her and she dare not condemn her pay masters. Whilst the member for Waterford remains silent and until she condemns the CFMEU, she shows what we all know: she is a fraud, a phony and a failure.

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