George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

At the request of Senator Fifield, I move:

That the Senate notes the challenges for good government posed by the culture of the Australian Labor Party and its special relationship with affiliated trade unions.

The subject matter of this motion raises issues of very grave concern to the Australian community. They are not matters that can be dismissed as being the ravings of hysterical people or, to use the phrase that the Prime Minister once used, of 'nut jobs on the internet'. The terms of the motion address the Senate to the challenges for good government posed by the culture of the Australian Labor Party and its special relationship with affiliated trade unions.

This parliament has since its inception in September 2010 been consumed with scandal after scandal arising from within the trade union movement and touching upon Australian Labor Party members of parliament arising from that culture. In the early part of the parliament, we heard a great deal about the member for Dobell, Mr Craig Thomson, and his conduct as an official of the Health Services Union. Time and again, time beyond number, the Prime Minister defended Mr Craig Thomson. Time and again the Prime Minister was asked whether she had full confidence in Mr Craig Thomson and she said repeatedly, 'I do have full confidence in the member for Dobell and I trust that he remains the member for Dobell for many, many, many years to come.' It was only earlier this year, after findings concerning the behaviour of Mr Craig Thomson, including findings—not allegations but findings—by an exhaustive inquiry by Fair Work Australia, were published that the Prime Minister was shamed into excluding Mr Craig Thomson from the Labor Party caucus. The point I seek to make is this: both the presence within the Labor Party caucus and the continued protection of such a person by the Labor Party leadership, including by the Prime Minister herself, was only possible because of the relationship that exists between the trade union movement and the Australian Labor Party.

When at last the Prime Minister was shamed into excluding Mr Craig Thomson from the Labor Party caucus and abandoning her protection of him, it was not as if anything new had been learned, because what the Fair Work Australia findings disclosed were the very allegations that the opposition had been making in the House of Representatives since the beginning of this parliament, and indeed which my colleague Senator Michael Ronaldson, initially, and my leader, Senator Eric Abetz, subsequently, had made in the previous parliament, in Senate estimates and in this chamber. So nothing new was learned. But at last, having sought to defend the indefensible for a period of years, the Prime Minister abandoned the member for Dobell.

We now know that Mr Thomson is a person of interest in a police investigation. In fact he is a person of interest in two police investigations—one initiated by the New South Wales Police Force and one initiated by the Victoria Police. Both of those police investigations were initiated after complaints made by me. When I made those complaints in August and September of last year, I was denounced for being on a witch-hunt. So fanciful was this 'witch-hunt' that already a man who was the Federal President of the Australian Labor Party, Mr Michael Williamson, has been arrested. Let me say that again: a man who was the Federal President of the Labor Party has been charged with serious crimes. So much for the assertions coming from those in the Australian Labor Party who are the protectors and guardians and custodians of its culture that the allegations I made, and others in the opposition made, were fanciful and without merit. We also know that Mr Craig Thomson continues to be, according to Detective Superintendent Dyson, who is in charge of the New South Wales Police investigation, a person of interest in that investigation. Where the investigation goes we will wait and see. We will abide the process. We will allow the process to take its course. But that process would not even have begun had the opposition, in the teeth of the most virulent criticism from the government, of both our motives and the substance of our concerns, not initiated it.

Unfortunately, the matter concerning Mr Craig Thomson is not the only matter of scandal with which this parliament has been concerned arising from the relationship between the Labor Party and the trade union movement and the culture which it promotes. I have many friends who are members of the Australian Labor Party, and all of us in this chamber, on a daily basis, deal professionally with Labor Party senators. I look across the chamber at the Labor Party senators I know—I see Senator Wong, Senator Bilyk, Senator Doug Cameron and Senator Brown—and I am sure they are all honest people. I am sure they are. I am sure those of my friends who are members of the Australian Labor Party are honest people, and I cannot bear to imagine how difficult it must be for them, as honest people, to be representing in parliament a political party of which they are undoubtedly proud but which is nevertheless home to a culture in which large sections of their party are controlled by people who are not honest, controlled by people like Mr Michael Williamson, who are accused of serious white-collar crime. It is not individual wrongdoing; it is a culture. It is a culture that allows such behaviour to occur, that nurtures it, in some cases encourages it and protects it, as Mr Craig Thomson was protected for years, including by the Prime Minister of Australia.

Turning to the Prime Minister of Australia, this parliament has increasingly this year been concerned with the scandal of the AWU and, in particular, the AWU Workplace Reform Association. When this story initially broke in the latter part of last year, as a result of the work of two intrepid journalist, Glenn Milne and Michael Smith, both of those journalists suffered serious professional consequences. Both of them were effectively dismissed from their news organisations by a pusillanimous management as a result of threats from the highest levels of government made to their news organisations. But I am pleased to say that that pusillanimity, that cowardice by the management of some of the largest news organisations in Australia, has not continued. And increasingly the Australian public are coming to realise that the Prime Minister does indeed have serious questions to answer in relation to her role in and knowledge of the activities of the AWU Workplace Reform Association.

In her press conference on 23 August this year the Prime Minister said that these allegations were only being made by 'misogynists and nut jobs on the internet'—to quote her elegant language. Well, there is no misogyny in saying of a politician, 'You have done the wrong thing'. There is no misogyny in saying of a politician, 'We are concerned about the probity of your conduct'. There is no misogyny in saying of a politician, 'We doubt your integrity'. There is no misogyny in saying, 'There are certain matters that remain to be explained and we ask you to explain them to the parliament'.

The people who are examining the matters alleged against Ms Gillard include arguably the most distinguished and highly awarded investigative reporter in Australia, Mr Hedley Thomas—twice the winner of the Walkley award. Mr Hedley Thomas has pursued this issue in a diligent and tenacious and professional way, not to be deterred by the claims 'There's nothing to see here'. When I was a young man living Queensland, I was involved in politics peripherally at the time of the Fitzgerald inquiry. I remember hearing the same excuse in the mid-1980s from National Party ministers who ended their careers in prison. 'There's nothing to see here.' It is the same argument that we hear from Labor ministers, including the Prime Minister, today that we heard from the other side of politics in Queensland in the 1980s: 'There's nothing to see here'.

These are serious allegations. They are allegations now being pursued, appropriately, by the two national newspapers: the Australian and the Australian Financial Review. These newspapers represent both of the great newspaper groups in Australia: the News Limited group and the Fairfax group. So much for nut jobs on the internet. Until the government comes to terms with the fact that these are serious allegations, reaching the highest levels of government, impeaching the personal probity and integrity of the Prime Minister herself, then the government is not doing itself justice and it is certainly not doing the Australian people justice.

Earlier today, in question time, I directed a question to the Leader of the Government in the Senate, Senator Evans. I directed him to some remarks by Mr Bill Shorten—a former senior trade union official, well familiar with the affairs of the AWU, of course—on Lateline last night, when he said that it would be absolutely inappropriate to use members' money to fund or finance an internal trade union election and that to set up a slush fund to do so—because that is what he was asked about by Mr Tony Jones—would be quite wrong. Yet that is the very thing to which the Prime Minister herself admitted, in an interview conducted by the partners of Slater & Gordon with her on 11 September 1995, a redacted transcript of which was tabled by me in the Senate today.

Of course, in 1995 Ms Julia Gillard was not the Prime Minister. She was not even a member of parliament; she was a private citizen. She had a spot on the Victorian Labor Party Senate ticket, but she was a partner in the law firm Slater & Gordon. On 11 September 1995 an interview with Ms Gillard was conducted by Mr Peter Gordon, a senior partner of that firm, and Mr Geoff Shaw, the general manager of that firm. That interview was taped and it is the redacted transcript of that interview that I tabled today.

Let me pause for a moment to say that it is a very unusual thing for a lawyer of a law firm, let alone a partner of a law firm, to be required to undergo a formal tape-recorded interview by the senior management of that firm. That would only ever happen if the senior management of that firm had serious concerns about wrongdoing by the lawyer concerned—in this case, Ms Julia Gillard. She was asked about her involvement in the establishment of the Australian Workers Union Workplace Reform Association. She admitted that she was responsible for the incorporation of that association in Western Australia. Then she said this:

… every union has what it refers to as a re-election fund, slush fund, whatever …

Lest it be thought that Ms Gillard was acting entirely on somebody else's behalf, she was asked by Peter Gordon:

PG: And to the extent that work was done on that file in relation to that, it was done by you?

JG: That's right.

PG: And did you get advice from anyone else in the firm in relation to any of those matters?

JG: No, I didn't.

Then we learnt that two pages immediately following that answer have been redacted. Astonishingly, we now learn that the file created at the time, containing all the contemporaneous documents relating to the incorporation of the Australian Workers Union Workplace Reform Association, has disappeared and cannot be located in the archives of the Western Australia Corporate Affairs Commission. We learn that the conveyancing file which contained the contemporaneous documents relating to the conveyance—which Ms Gillard admits that she was responsible for the conduct of—of a property in Melbourne alleged to have been bought with funds laundered through the AWU Workplace Relations Association has also gone missing and cannot be located.

We also learnt, most recently, that the Federal Court files in two matters in the Sydney Registry of the Federal Court, both bearing the name Ludwig and Harrison, in which Mr Bill Ludwig, the President of the Australian Workers Union, sued various people to recover and track down the moneys that had been laundered through the Australian Workers Union Workplace Reform Association, had also gone missing. And I received as recently as yesterday a letter from the Registrar of the Federal Court telling me that, despite exhaustive searches in both the Sydney and Melbourne registries of the Federal Court, those files could not be found.

If the Prime Minister thinks that, by continuing with her stonewalling denials, she can maintain the fiction that there are no more questions to be answered by her about this matter, this scandal, then she is kidding herself. What she ought to do is what Mr Craig Thomson did and make a statement to the House of Representatives next week, fully and truthfully explaining her role in these events.