Help Crowd Fund The Jacksonville Book Here
With the Trade Union Royal Commission in turmoil, co-operating with fraudsters is not the best look, today I ponder who is scratching backs and who is just itchy.
I would like to say I was shocked and appalled at revelations in yesterdays Australian that Kathy Jackson was not only helped through the Royal Commission, but advised also. However I am even further from being shocked by this than Joe Hockey will ever be to a budget surplus, and lets face it that’s something measured in light years.
It’s not that the revelations aren’t shocking, they are, it is only that this was something I had expected and suspected all along but could not confirm.
Huge congratulations are due to Pamela Williams and Jared Owens for some brilliant journalism.
The article confirms that Jackson worked closely with the Royal Commission, as did her partner Michael Lawler, she was given advance notice on what she would be facing questions on and tips to prepare for them. She was also given scope to attack her factional rivals and it was suggested that she also attack sections of the media she was having trouble with.
The Commission also suggested that she attack Labor Party figures and in particular Bill Shorten.
Those that say this gives further weight to the argument of bias and the Commission as a taxpayer-funded witch-hunt miss the point. This does not give the allegations extra weight, it confirms them as undisputed fact.
The article quotes Eric Abetz telling Bill Shorten that he needs to get “on board” with the Commission. Why on earth would anybody climb aboard a train that was off the rails, on fire, and headed for a cliff?
The hide of Abetz to say anything at any rate given it was exposed long ago that either he or his office was in regular contact with Jackson after her phone records appeared as evidence here all the way back in July 2012. Perhaps someone in the Senate should ask Abetz about the amount of contact he or his office has had with Jackson or Lawler since the Commission commenced. That may prove interesting indeed.
Eric Abetz – Between the Commission and Kathy, I need a phone for each hand
Image – Fairfax
On a personal level this confirmation of just how closely the Royal Commission worked with possibly Australia’s largest union fraudster, $1.4 Million and counting, and her Tony Abbott appointed partner sheds light on a few things for me.
For starters Kathy being advised to use the opportunity to “tackle media critics” by Commission staff helps explain a couple of things.
It would firstly explain why Jackson’s evidence was full of my articles in a desperate bid to show how she was being bullied by the “blogosphere”. There was a chapter of Kathy Jacksons submission dedicated to trying to put a dark cloud over my work, and I can’t help but now wonder if that was done on the Commissions advice.
Interestingly that dark cloud really turned out to be a savage storm, however it opened up over Jackson in Federal Court when she was ordered to repay much of what I was apparently bullying her about. $1.4 Million worth of it anyway.
Advice from the Commission might also explain why Kathy Jackson ally and twice member rejected election hopeful and hopeless Katrina Hart gave a signed submission of evidence against me that she knew to be utterly false. In doing so she committed what I believe to be perjury, as providing false information to a Royal Commission knowingly is a serious offence.
Despite evidence of this and the seriousness of the offence I am of the firm belief that absolutely nothing has occurred whatsoever. No questions asked, no investigation, no charges, no consequences of any kind.
The Commission’s closeness to Team Jackson may also explain the lack of action after another ugly incident involving union thug, alleged workers compensation cheat, and Jackson’s boy blunder Marco Bolano.
Many will remember the matter of Marco Bolano attempting to intimidate myself and two others in an alleyway beside the building the Royal Commission was being held in. Despite there being three statements given to Royal Commission security nothing was ever done.
Bolano harassing myself and others in lanewaynext to the Royal Commission
The irony of being intimidated by a union thug at a Royal Commission into that exact type of behavior within the union movement was incredible. The fact that nothing would be done about it was also at the time a clear indication that this was a Castrated Commission, it could not even manage to clean up this type of behavior right under it’s nose.
However judging from the Australians evidence the truth of the Commission’s motive could be even worse.
It is also worth noting that this was not the only incident in Bolano at the Commission, with one witness being intimidated and threatened by him to the point where she was advised by police to hire personal security and showed up to give evidence with a bodyguard in tow. Another member of the press was allegedly grabbed around the waist and dragged away from the press pack by Bolano.
All of this the Commission was aware of, yet nothing was done.
Dysen Heydon wants George Brandis to know that his bookshelf is bigger
Image – Fairfax
This is a Royal Commission with absolutely no integrity left in the tank.
For a legal process that is supposed to be both independent of government and of the highest standard of accountability it has proven itself to be anything but.
A Royal Commissioner is supposed to be beyond reproach someone the public can have full faith in, and for that Commissioner to take days to decide if public perception had been tarnished told the story. For that Commissioner to then decide that perception had not been tarnished was beyond ridiculous given every hour it took for that decision to be made tarnished the reputation further.
We have seen Liberal Party fundraisers, evidence held back, misleading leaks made to the media, and now this revelation.
For a Royal Commission that is supposed to be about weeding out corruption to climb into bed (or the barber’s chair) with what a Federal Court has shown to be perhaps the biggest fraudster the union movement has ever seen is a clear indication of how much faith can be put into its findings and how much faith we can have in its integrity.
When the Royal Commission decided to partner up with Kathy Jackson & co, they would have done well to remember this saying;
“If you lay down with dogs don’t be surprised when you wake up with fleas”
No wonder they are scratching.
Vintage Wixxy. One of the last of the real people.
Cheers Wixxy for the updated update of the ongoing saga which is Jacksonville that tears at the thin fabric of credibility of the TURC
Who Abetz talked to at the TURC is truly the genie in the bottle IMO because was he doing the bagman work for ???? {the AG??} and in fact ad Minister for employment he would be Lawler`s guardian demon.
I noticed Erica Betz preening and fluffing about after the Senate knocked down Labor`s call to and the TURC but this seems to have incensed Penny Wong further and her fury will be played out today in some form,again IMO
Soon the rest will be leaked because the cruel bastards even cruel their own quickly once used and mass rapists never remember all their victims
Surely this means Labor will have to set up a Royal Commission into this whole affair – corruption, collusion, perjury, defamation, etc. Not to mention the waste of money.
Anything to do with Abbott and his cohorts is bound to be rotten to the core, this “Royal Commission” most of all. Respect to you Pete.
Hi Peter, Yet another well written article as usual, I have been following you and the Jacksonville saga for a while and I am constantly surprised how you report on facts, which the msm still seem be awol on.
Keep up the good work
Each week brings further confirmation of the details of your Jacksonville series, Peter. What we have here a a political conspiracy involving: Kathy Jackson and Marco Bolano and several other corrupt HSU officials; the H.R. Nicholls Society, the Liberal party, some of the leading figures of the mainstream media, the Fair Work Commission and now the highest levels of the law.
Everything you say here is true. We are living in a very corrupt society.
In this line-up, there are quite a few who should be brought before the law.
However, as these people have tremendous power, it is hard to see more than one or two scapegoats having to be sacrificed.
Without your brilliant work, none of this would be known. As you say, every attempt has been made by the most powerful figures in Australia to hide the truth and blame the innocent.
Brilliant work, Peter. We hope that the Walkley will be yours one day. When that occurs we will know that honesty and respectability has returned to Australian journalism.
Congratulations Peter just in case you missed this:
‘Fair Work vice-president ¬Michael Lawler privately admitted to lawyers for the trade union royal commission that he was working feverishly preparing his partner Kathy Jackson’s legal ¬defence at the same time he was on fully paid sick leave.
Mr Lawler confidentially told commission lawyers in July last year that he and Ms Jackson were so busy on her case that they were getting little sleep and were exhausted. According to documents prepared by Matthew Ashworth, a legal officer with the royal commission who made notes of his phone conversation with Mr Lawler, the Fair Work vice-president told him on July 29 last year that the couple had been constantly working on Ms Jackson’s issues.
Mr Ashworth wrote in his file note of the conversation with Mr Lawler: “Michael called me and spoke to me about the draft statement he and Kathy were preparing. He said that he and Kathy were both ‘f..ked’ … Michael told me that the draft statement would be sent through to me in the morning of the 30th at 7am.”
Mr Lawler also complained during the phone call that drafting Ms Jackson’s statement had been hard work. The revelation that Mr Lawler was working on Ms Jackson’s case throws new light on the nine months of sick leave he took between June last year and July this year — a period that included Ms Jackson’s preparation for appearances before the royal commission, her defence in Federal Court hearings and the preparation of a large number of witness statements, affidavits and documents designed to both defend her and to deflect damage on to her opponents in the Health Services Union. After filing certificates with Fair Work to say he would be sick for many months, Mr Lawler maintained his salary of $435,000 a year.
• More: Fair Work VP in QC face-off
When Mr Lawler was appointed to Fair Work in 2002 by then workplace minister Tony Abbott, the act was silent on sick leave limits, thus enabling him to take unlimited sick leave, in contrast to most workers.
A file note of an earlier conversation between Ms Jackson and two royal commission lawyers — Mr Ashworth and junior counsel Fiona Roughley — reveals that Mr Lawler had also spent a few days in hospital.
On July 25, the commission phoned Ms Jackson to discuss her return to the witness box. The file note — referring to Ms Roughley — states: “Fiona said she was sorry to hear about Michael and his admission to hospital and that she hoped he would be okay.”
Four days later Mr Lawler was hard at work again on Ms Jackson’s legal issues and complaining to the commission that they were both exhausted by the work. “Michael said that if (counsel assisting the royal commission) Jeremy (Stoljar) and Fiona (Roughley) did not want any of it then they could just discard it, or they could cut parts out or ask Kathy to elaborate on any other parts,” Mr Ashworth’s file note records Mr Lawler as saying on July 25.
If Mr Lawler were found to have abused sick leave provisions at any time, his tenure at Fair Work could be in question. Already Mr Lawler is facing controversy over his extended sick leave, as well as questions over whether he has benefited from any HSU funds misused by Ms Jackson. He is also facing an investigation of his conduct in a Fair Work conference last year where he allegedly verbally abused an industrial advocate appearing before him.
Ms Jackson this year was found by the Federal Court to have rorted $1.4 million from the HSU. Last year Mr Lawler commenced moving into his own name, the couple’s NSW home which was bought using the proceeds of Ms Jackson’s previous Melbourne home where she had deployed some funds misappropriated from the HSU to pay her mortgage. Mr Lawler has placed a caveat over the NSW home in a bid to stymie the HSU.
Mr Lawler did not respond to questions from The Australian last week regarding his considerable work on Ms Jackson’s case during sick leave. In July last year, Mr Lawler also complained to the royal commission legal officer that Ms Jackson’s legal battle against the HSU was taking a toll on him, revealing that he had been “spoken to” by his superiors at Fair Work. In his file note of the July 29, 2014, telephone call with Mr Lawler, Mr Ashworth wrote: “Michael told me that the media has been harassing Kathy for some time and that now he was struggling with the effects of the last few years, even at his own workplace, where he had been spoken to by his superiors.”
At the time, Mr Lawler’s superiors were vice-president Joe Catanzariti, who assigned work to Mr Lawler, and Fair Work president Iain Ross, who would be the only member of Fair Work with the seniority and power to tackle Mr Lawler about his activities in the Jackson case.
Sources at the commission have privately speculated that Justice Ross raised concerns regarding Mr Lawler’s public intervention in the Federal Court on June 20 last year on Ms Jackson’s behalf before judge Richard Tracey.
Neither Justice Ross nor Mr Lawler responded to questions of whether Mr Lawler was chastised for his Federal Court intervention — which raised perceptions of a conflict of interest over his position as an independent umpire over unions, as well as the fact that he had taken sick leave at the time.
In his file note, Mr Ashworth also records that Mr Lawler praised Mr Stoljar, contrasting his performance favourably against the counsel assisting’s opposite number at the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption. “Michael told me that he was in awe of Jeremy Stoljar, especially when compared with the ICAC counsel assisting, Geoffrey Watson SC,” the note says. “He said that Jeremy was highly efficient and dealt only with the evidence at hand.”
The file notes by Mr Ashworth and also by Ms Roughley, together with emails between the commission and Ms Jackson, reveal the extent of Mr Lawler’s work on Ms Jackson’s case during sick leave.’
• Michael Lawler: I helped Kathy Jackson while on sick leave The Australian September 7, 2015 12:00AM
• Pamela Williams http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/industrial-relations/michael-lawler-i-helped-kathy-jackson-while-on-sick-leave/story-fn59noo3-1227515480464?sv=f2e218ecbeb728606898b6fb34e3dab2
Again Peter congratulations for your thorough research and courage to bring it to the surface:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/industrial-relations/michael-lawler-linked-to-kathy-jacksons-rorted-funds-for-mortgage/story-fn59noo3-1227493733465
Michael Lawler linked to Kathy Jacksons rorted funds for mortgage
Documents underpinning this week’s Federal Court finding that now-disgraced union leader Kathy Jackson misused $1.4 million have revealed a string of banking transactions related to a mortgage that could tie her partner to questions of whether he benefited from money rorted from low-paid union workers.
The Health Services Union told the court that the trans¬actions represented a money trail wherein Jackson withdrew cash funds from union accounts and made mortgage payments on her home in 2008, which, when sold, formed part of the profits she later sank into a NSW south coast home she and partner Fair Work vice-president ¬Michael Lawler share.
Lawler did not respond to questions yesterday on whether he was aware of the transactions. He also did not respond to questions on whether he had benefited, inadvertently or otherwise, from any funds Jackson was found to have misused.
The Weekend Australian also asked ¬Lawler whether he had ¬accompanied Jackson on any part of a three-month long trip she took between June and October 2010, or any other holiday or trip cited in the Federal Court findings against her this week.
When Lawler and Jackson openly started their life together in 2008, she was a powerhouse union ¬figure and a dramatic, high-stakes ALP factional player. He was a former barrister appointed by the Liberal Party as a vice-president of the union regulator Fair Work Australia. An arresting couple, they were a match made in industrial relations heaven.
Seven years later, with their lives totally entwined, Jackson is a bankrupt, ordered to repay the Health Services Union $1.4 million in rorted and misused funds, and Lawler is a highly paid controversial player inside Fair Work who has taken nine months of sick leave, standing by her side.
Darker shadows hover over the pair as Jackson’s creditors begin untangling bank accounts and finances that could potentially engulf Lawler also in damaging questions of whether he has benefited — either knowingly or inadvertently — in Jackson largesse that wrongly came from union funds.
Jackson’s rampaging extravagance was laid bare this week by a Federal Court decision that she deployed union money into a personal wheel of fortune. It was the moment when her corruption-busting image proved nothing but a mirage.
She intoxicated her political supporters with a megaphone in one hand attacking others for stealing from the HSU while at the same time she had her other hand reaching into union bank accounts for ¬holidays, home furnishings, art, ¬alcohol, groceries and mortgage payments.
Jackson’s actions raise questions about her relentless pursuit of enemies.
While outing former HSU boss Michael Williamson and her predecessor as national secretary of the union and later ALP member for Dobell Craig Thomson for misuse of union funds and credit cards for personal travel and lifestyle, Jackson was doing the same.
Almost with the hallmark of an arsonist or killer returning to the scene of the crime to help police, Jackson blew the whistle on colleagues as she continued to pillage union funds herself.
In doing so, she misled and made a mockery of some of her biggest supporters, including Tony Abbott and Workplace Minister Eric Abetz.
In the end, Jackson has ¬become a poster girl for widespread union corruption and the dreadful culture of some modern unions that the government has sought to stamp out.
Her reach spread throughout the industrial relations system, with factional power that made her once an ally and later a bitter foe of ALP leader Bill Shorten, who destroyed Jackson’s powerbase by putting the HSU into ¬administration.
Jackson jumped the fence from her Labor links to heroine of the Liberal Party’s most fierce anti-union warriors.
Today, the very government to whom Jackson leaked and proselytised on corruption has been placed in the awkward position of having protected a golden girl now turned to dust.
On June 12, 2013, Jackson ¬addressed the HR Nicholls ¬Society, declaring: “I want to see wrongdoing exposed and I’d like to see reforms made to make union leaderships more accountable to members — which would protect against future financial and political corruption.’’
Jackson burned firstly the ¬Gillard government with her ¬attacks on Thomson at the peak of Labor’s crisis over a hung parliament that rested by threads on his vote, and now, after the Federal Court’s ¬indictment, has virtually done over her conservative ¬supporters, leaving them squirming.
In her wake, Lawler, with nine months’ fully paid sick leave as he supported Jackson in the past year, has become another albatross for the Prime Minister, the man who ¬appointed him to the FWC.
In breathtaking detail, judge Richard Tracey in the Federal Court laid out the case to force Jackson to repay the HSU sums of money that she had no authority to spend on herself — and which she had used in ¬addition to her $270,000 salary.
She was ordered to compensate the union for $284,000 taken from a slush fund (known as the NHDA fund), which Jackson created using money paid by a Melbourne cancer clinic to settle an industrial dispute.
Regarding this NHDA fund, Justice Tracey wrote: “She had chosen an ambiguous title for the account and represented (falsely) that she was the chairperson or chief officer of a non-existent -unincorporated body which had authorised her to open the ¬account. Once the funds were in the account, she expended them, at her discretion and in secrecy.”
In the defence, filed with the court, Jackson admitted she had used union funds for personal purposes. Justice Tracey wrote this week: “Specifically, she admitted that $4500 drawn using a cashed cheque dated 19 May, 2008, formed part of a cash deposit into a credit union mortgage account, operated by her and her then husband, on 29 May, 2008.” She used part of a $7500 cheque dated ¬December 2008 to fund a $5000 cash deposit into her mortgage the same day; and she paid $3000 of $6000 drawn with a cashed cheque dated September 2009 into a personal account.
These sums were taken from union accounts and paid into her personal accounts after Jackson split with her former husband, Jeff Jackson. Kathy Jackson in 2013 provided a witness statement to the royal commission into trade unions saying she separated finally from Jeff Jackson in March 2008 and started her new long-term relationship that month.
During a hearing before Justice Tracey in June, barrister for the HSU Mark Irving told the court that these amounts — totalling $15,700 — had been used to make mortgage payments on Ms Jackson’s Balwyn home in Melbourne, over a period of six months in 2008.
In mid-2012, Jackson and Lawler moved back to Sydney together. She bought a home in Wombarra on the NSW coast for $1.3 million, using the Balwyn home as security and with Lawler as guarantor because Jackson was by then fighting with the HSU and unemployed.
When the Balwyn home was sold in 2013, Jackson paid the net profits of close to $620,000 into the Wombarra property, thus ¬reducing financial stress on Law¬ler, who was paying the mortgage.
In the court on 24 June this year, Justice Tracey summed up the transaction in a question to -Irving: “So according to your submission, the evidence shows that $15,700 came out of the account in 2008 and went into the mortgage account relating to the Balwyn property before it was sold and ¬before the Wombarra property was purchased?”
Irving responded: “When the Balwyn property was sold, the proceeds of the sale … are traced, as a result of the transactions in ¬October 2013, to the Wombarra property.”
In an affidavit this year ¬detailing transactions on the Wombarra mortgage that was both guaranteed and paid by Lawler, Jackson listed three ¬deposits to Wombarra as having come from the profits on her Balwyn home: on October 23, 2013, she paid in $248,757; on October 29, 2013, she paid in $250,000; on October 29, 2013, she paid in $122,000 — totalling $620,700.
The same affidavit shows a Commonwealth Bank account in Jackson’s name that lists investment home loan transactions for their Wombarra home in the name of two borrowers — Lawler and Jackson — using the Balwyn property as security for the loan until it was sold.
The Opposition Leader yesterday made it clear Labor was considering whether to seek Lawler’s removal from Fair Work through a parliamentary challenge, the only legal route for disciplining or removing members of the ¬commission.
Shorten turned the attack on the Prime Minister’s appointment of Lawler, saying: “We’ll see what evidence emerges in coming days and weeks, but there is no doubt that Mr Abbott has said clearly in the past he thinks this person is an excellent person.
“Yesterday, he significantly wouldn’t back him in and he challenged Labor to take up its options further, and we will certainly take up Mr Abbott’s ¬ invitation and investigate what ¬options there are.”
The Federal Court ruling on Jackson has also showed that misuse of union funds occurred within days or months of a powerful statement of support for Jackson from senior Liberal figures.
On three separate occasions in August 2011, Abbott extolled ¬Jackson’s courage in doorstop -interviews and in parliament, ¬calling her “a brave woman who wants to see the right thing done’’.
On August 24, 2011, Christopher Pyne told Sky News that Jackson had referred union corruption to police and had shown “real courage and integrity’’.
And yet, just three days earlier, August 21, 2011, Jackson had touched down from a month-long European holiday that took her to Los Angeles and London and then on to Hong Kong, coinciding with a large cash withdrawal she made from the union’s NHDA ¬account.
On May 8, 2012, Christopher Pyne told parliament: “They have traduced the reputation of Kathy Jackson, who was one of the few who had the courage to stand up.”
Just four months later, Jackson drained $9000 in cash from the union’s NHDA fund in another cash withdrawal.
On May 21, 2012, she appeared on the ABC’s 7.30 program to give a heartfelt rebuttal of Thomson’s claims, made in his speech to parliament, where he accused her of driving a union-paid Volvo, ¬extracting childcare and gym fees from the union coffers, taking many overseas trips at union ¬expense, and doubling her salary to $270,000 after his departure.
Asked whether she was in part responsible for the circus surrounding Thomson because of the fact she had repeatedly made ¬accusations against him for corruption while he had not been charged, Jackson said the HSU was a union with deep-rooted corruption; she commended police for trying to get to the bottom of the Williamson and Thomson corruption. She said she had tried to get “someone to listen to me” about that corruption and was ¬finally forced to go to the police and the media to bring “the antiseptic of public scrutiny”.
She described Thomson as ¬delusional.
• The Australian
• August 22, 2015 12:00AM
Pamela Williams
“I was shocked and appalled ….”, lol with you Peter Wicks.
When will we all accept that it’s individuals that are corrupt, not a sector of our society as such?
Certain individuals within the union movement sector are no more (or less?) corrupt than certain individuals within the corporate sector and certain individuals within the political sector – or within any other sector with access to money and power.
We may all have our bias against a particular sector – I know I do – but blaming that sector is like racism. In other words we’re blaming the group we don’t like rather than the individuals actually involved in the behaviour.
It’s very childish as far as I’m concerned. And we shouldn’t let anyone get away with it!