Trades hall

It's a seat she's held for over 20 years.

In May this year, she announced a $600,000 grant for the Ballarat Trades Hall, the home of the union movement in that area, but also Labor's party headquarters in her electorate.

Indeed, all of Labor's local political advertising carries the required authorisation that lists the trades hall address on the literature.

Now, honestly, ask yourself this.

Is half a million dollars to renovate Labor HQ really the best use of your scarce taxpayer money? After all, it's worth noting that on their website, Trades Hall makes a real point of providing details about all the various places in the building, all the rooms and conference facilities that they hire out commercially for a fee.

If the Labor Party and Trades Hall are making money renting out this building, then why don't they use some of the money there to do the renovations? Why hit the taxpayer up yet again? This grant handed out by the Infrastructure Minister Catherine King to a union and a Labor Party connected to the building in her own seat also raises questions about probity and process rules, particularly given her branches and Labor branches in that seat have been such a frequent user of the building, including hosting her own election night parties.

Even Anthony Albanese has attended union events at Ballarat Trades Hall.

What's more, this is also the regional headquarters for the Australian Services Union.

But after a few months, they decided that they were not in the fray.

They moved across the road from Trades Hall.

Across the road from Trades Hall.

At the Horticultural Hall, which is now, I think, Victoria Opera Centre.

Just across the road.

And we usually have a little ceremony there on the 1st of May.

But...

What they did is they opened up the hall to the unionists at Trades Hall and their primary focus was to educate Australian unionists and many Australian unionists were looking for authoritarian solutions and they blamed migrants for their situation, not the fact that inequalities in wealth were not as a result of migrants but as a result of the squatocracy.

There are, I can see some comrades here from the ITU, there are the transport union, There are...

The Young Workers' Centre is out of Trades Hall, is an incorporated association.

And so are all the regional Trades Halls, the Bendigo Trades Hall, the Geelong Trades Hall.

All of these are incorporated associations, and all of them have an industrial relations purpose.

They were never consulted before the legislation was proposed and when they found out the legislation might affect them or this legislation in the hands of a future One Nation government might be used for whatever it wants to do with it, they were righteously outraged.

We thought it should be opposed in its entirety but their failure to full-throatedly support it did the job.

Other unions came out in support of us as well.

The CPSU Vic, the MEAA, the MUA National and Victorian branches, branches of the NTU and the Black Caucus of the ANMF all publicly broke rank with Trades Hall to support RAFWU and oppose the legislation.

And

so because of that we have Trades Hall from Victoria in there as the peak body for that.

We've got aid and development groups.

We've got small NGOs working with prostitutes on the street.

Well, a desperate Victorian Labor Party, facing defeat in six weeks' time after more than a decade in power, disgracefully and desperately played the abortion card overnight.

And make no mistake, this is an attempt to wedge politically Liberal leader Jess Wilson's union and the union headquarters, Trades Hall, is hand in hand with this, by the way, Premier Ben Carroll and his advisers trying to turn up the temperature on abortion rights when it's not even vaguely an election issue.

I mean, take a look at this poster.

that it was time to coincide with this union government smear campaign.

This relates to, apparently, to cover out-of-pocket costs for abortion care up to 16 weeks.

Now, it seems Labor's wedge has worked, but I still think it is one of the most dirty wedges I can remember.

overnight, backed by their union mates at Trades Hall, pledged if they elected, they will legislate for taxpayers to fund surgical abortions up to 16 weeks and medical abortions currently costing $700 of out-of-pocket after Medicare is included.

That will be free.

It's a Queensland-based party.

It's no different to Trades Hall being owned by the union movement and space given to the Labor Party or the Business Council of Australia donating or loaning or giving cheaper rent to the Liberal Party.

or having

a building donated to them by someone or other.