Last Friday there must have been a lot of thankful people dishing out a lot of thank you messages.
Last Friday Commissioner John Dyson Heydon handed over his Interim Report regarding the Trade Union Royal Commission, the report can be read in full on my HSU resources page.
The report was originally due later in January but was released earlier for reasons that many have speculated on. But it is fair to say it was released on a day that shows that the government thought this Royal Commission had been a failed exercise, why else dump it out there on the Friday before Xmas?
The most thankful of all would be Kathy Jackson whose appearance and testimony at the Royal Commission caused more headlines and front page news stories than any other witness what with charity shags and claims of ambush. In fact the only witness that received more attention on the day they appeared was former Prime Minister Julia Gillard on the day she was shown at long last to be completely clean, even in the eyes of a right-wing witch hunt like this Commission.
Jackson would be thankful that she has been completely ignored by the Commissioners report. Not even the $250K she took from cancer workers and threw in a personal bank account to go on a wild spending spree. The account that was disguised to look legitimate in the HSU books and then when discovered attempted to be passed off as a slush fund.
Not only did Jackson go on a wild spending spree but she shared the love and the loot around with accomplices giving huge sums of money to her ex-husband Jeff and also a chunk in an envelope to her factional ally and standover man Marco Bolano, apparently so he could use the money to illegally fund his own union election campaign.
Still, Commissioner Heydon must have been asleep at the wheel on those days as it didn’t rate a real mention only one passing reference. Commissioner Heydon must have also missed that section of his Counsel Assisting’s report, the one that recommended Jackson be referred to the Department Of Prosecution for criminal investigation.
Also thankful would be Attorney General George Brandis and Senator Eric Abetz for saving them the embarrassment of their Royal Commission pointing out their star witness as the most corrupt person appearing before the Commission if the allegations are proven true. Even based on those allegations she has admitted to under oath during the parts that the Commissioner must have slept through there has been no other witness appear that has personally acquired such vast sums of money from their union without the members knowledge, let alone blessing.
Colonel Klink and Shultz – They see and hear nothing relating to Jackson
In fact, there must be a truckload of Coalition MP’s, including Abbott himself, going “phew” and silently giving thanks that Commissioner Heydon was happy to sacrifice his own reputation to save them the embarrassment of pointing out their unwavering support of an admitted criminal.
However it is the union movement that should be thankful, particularly the CFMEU who seem to have been the most targeted in this whole taxpayer-funded charade.
The union movement should be overjoyed that this report cannot be taken in any way seriously if its 1817 pages have blatantly missed possibly the most corrupt official to have appeared before the Commission. This highlights that the whole commission has been nothing but a very expensive witch hunt done for political purposes.
But perhaps the most thankful of all should be the public, after all as the legal fraternity involved rack up hundreds of thousands of billable hours, it is the public that are footing the bill.
You may think that’s nothing to be thankful for, but at least we now know exactly what it is we are paying for.
Any doubt that this Commission was actually about protecting member’s interests rather than a witch hunt for political purposes has now been shown as wishful thinking.
There is only one certainty in all of this and that is one of the items on the Royal Commission agenda was the protection of the Coalitions golden girl Kathy Jackson.
Perhaps a hint for the media was the departure of the Royal Commission’s Media Director Adrian Kerr immediately after the report was released. This meant the Commission basically dropped a bombshell and ensured it could not face media scrutiny on it.
Kerr had been visibly uncomfortable in his role on some of the sitting days and was particularly touchy on matters involving the Commissions integrity. In his email to the press regarding the release of the Commissioners report, Kerr finished off by saying this
“This is my final day with the Commission. Thank you all for a great professional year on the job. I’ll keep your contact details for future reference.”
A strange way of announcing your departure to the countries media, or perhaps strange timing is more appropriate.
Did you miss this section of my report? Counsel Assisting Stoljar asks the Commissioner
A Royal Commission is considered the most powerful legal inquiry that this country has in its arsenal, and is considered by many to be beyond reproach.
An inquiry of this magnitude that is set up to expose corruption in the union movement so offenders can be criminally prosecuted that is found to have as part of its agenda the protection of possibly the most corrupt union official this country has ever seen, is an inquiry that is itself corrupt to the core.
We should be thankful that at long last that the Royal Commission has shown its true colours.
A corruption inquiry that seeks to smear the union movement and that selectively ignores allegations of corruption on a grand scale, I have struggled hard to think of anything that could possibly be more corrupt than that, but I have managed to come up of just one thing.
The government that sets it up.
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When Labor return they should hold a Royal Commission into the running’s of this Royal Commission .Heydon and StoLIAR will need to be held accountable. How humiliating for their profession that they were as weak as piss!!
I guess one high profile hospital patient will soon be out and about laughing her head off and enjoying herself
oh, hang on, that’s what she’s been doing all along …
Thank you for the updates in this hideously corrupt process.
This mustn’t be allowed to succeed. What can we, as citizens who abhore corruption our judicial and political systems, do to address this corruption?
Maybe email and/or text the Royal Commissioner and politicians. Send Facebook messages if relevant pages can be found. Write letters of complaint.
It would be good to have some guidelines on what is the best approach.
… more proof of a broken system and a culture in decline.
Peter, I’m not sure why you’re so sure Commissioner Heydon hasn’t included Kathy Jackson’s conduct in the (as yet) unpublished third volume of the interim report. I suspect that there’s a lot more of substance in that volume than in the published ones. This seems a more like likely explanation than any alleged bias by Commissioner Heydon and the Counsel Assisting. Please note that my post does not attempt to justify the blatant politics involved in the setting up of the Royal Commission, but that is a very different issue to having a go at those given the task of running the Royal Commission.
Dyson Heydon also ignored and refused to allow evidence that certain witnesses were being paid to appear by a well-known Melbourne legal identity. The Royal Commissioner’s reputation is that of a deeply conservative, narrow-minded legal apologist, a man who seems to detest any form of social solidarity, and has argued against any form of legal activism – ie, reform to meet changing community values, and a man who, in his own words, believes that Catholicism is under attack in Australia – comparing these attacks to Nazi attitudes to religion. And last but not least, he is a man who, in one infamous High Court judgement, argued that rape within marriage could not be considered unacceptable by the general community in 1962.
I think Geoff may be right in that the Jackson bits are in the third confidential Volume. This still doesn’t make it right though. A possible reason could be that much of the Jackson material is the subject of current civil proceedings, although I am not sure of the legal requirements that would make it subjudical. Still I am very sceptical that the Jackson findings and recommendations have not been published.
I hope you are right Geoff, but I have my doubts based on the manner in which this Royal Commission has been run up to this point.
The Lawyers for the HSU never even had their chance to cross-examine Jackson for 90% of what they wanted to cross-examine her on due to the Royal Commission allowing her to get away with delaying proceedings.
I note that Commissioner found lots of time to go into the allegations against the current Branch 1 officials which are trivial in comparison to evidence against Jackson.
Even if she does make the 3rd volume I would question the need to delay the release of findings against her, particularly given the Federal Court matter going currently on re the $1.4 Million.
I still think calling Gillard was the downfall of this whole thing as his statements on how she behaved were subjective bullshit and she was never in the frigging union.
I think you have jumped the gun here, Peter. Precedent exists in Australian law for delaying RC interrogation and findings in cases where an individual is already before the courts, as the ability to put questions and demand an answer from a witness at an enquiry whose rules allow this is subservient to the right of the witness in question to refuse to so answer them if the answers might be self incriminatory in concurrent proceedings. I think, if you reflect on this, you might admit the possibility that Justice Heydon is also weighing these matters in his mind. Patience is called for, justice may seem to move at a snails pace, but move it does.
The second reason that findings regarding Kathy Jackson might not be in this interim report is the distinct possibility other pieces of evidence are being sought and examined in relation to other offences. Conspiracy and secret commissions for instance.
It’s a long report and easy to miss Para 95 of Chapter 1. Jackson’s behaviour will be the subject of a future report, the one that follows the dirty money which is the basis of the extension to the Terms of Reference requested by the Commissioner. This doesn’t bode well for Jackson. I don’t think that she opening the champagne unless for self-medication.
Do not let this ruin your Xmas. I think her time is coming.
Before you deride the Commissioner too much for after all the commission buck stops with him, you should read paras 436 to 452 starting at page 302. Those sentiments don’t sound right wing – they just sound fair and maybe even a little progressive.