Alex Gallacher (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to make a contribution in this debate. I want to say at the outset that there are some judicial guidelines around conduct of judicial officers. Basically, they go to the merits of whether you need to sever the ties with your political party of choice. It would be prudent, I suppose, that the current royal commissioner would be apprised of those guidelines and sever all ties with his links to a political party. The easiest way to do that is to decline the invitation to a Liberal Party fundraiser. He did that at a very late time, at 9.23 this morning.

I really want to go to some of the substance that Senator Seselja has put onto the table as fact. In just a cursory glance at the interim report of this royal commission, you find a very long statement about the standard of proof and findings of fact. Senator Seselja has alleged that there are several findings of fact against unions and against Mr Shorten and others. Let us just read this:

A Royal Commission is not a court of law. There are no civil or criminal proceedings before it. The rules of evidence do not apply. The concept of the onus of proof does not apply. Strictly, it follows that neither the civil standard of proof nor the criminal standard of proof applies to the Commission.

We have had very good royal commissions and very good royal commission outcomes in the history of the Australian parliament. We know that the conservatives have always used royal commissions against unions and their political opponents. And we know that they have not always gone the way they thought they would go. The bottom of the harbour comes to mind. The royal commissions actually got their own life and found out that the great majority of people who were at risk of improper behaviour was not the unions; it was the people doing their bottom-of-the-harbour tax schemes.

We know that this commission has taken an enormous amount of evidence. I know from my personal experience as a former President of the Transport Workers Union and as a former secretary of the South Australia/Northern Territory branch that multiple copies of approximately seven years of financial records were subpoenaed and trucked all the way to the royal commission for forensic examination. I also know that not one question emanated from seven years, or thereabouts, of the forensic evaluation of union records that has happened right across this country. This commission has spent millions of dollars—and incidentally tied up millions of dollars of union funds in meeting its requirements, and hundreds of thousands of hours of union employees' and members' money in meeting their requirements—to find, in our case, zero. And they have tuned in to some peripheral activities, mainly outside of the bread and butter work of unions—which is representing their members and getting deals done. They have over a seven-year period identified some peripheral issues and homed in on those. This royal commissioner needed to demonstrate impartiality and lack of bias, and instead he has done exactly the opposite. I watched the media reports emanating from hearings of this royal commission. They home in completely on his bias and on any suggestion that he has been critical of one of the witnesses. They publicise that, and the Paul Murrays of the world give it a guernsey. They act as if it is an earth-shattering revelation. Just the other day I turned on Sky News and there it was: a 'bombshell' in the royal commission—more unsubstantiated fact and allegation portrayed as truth. This royal commissioner allows it to happen, and this royal commissioner thinks it is okay to go to a Liberal fundraiser.

I do my best to get outside this environment here and mix with the general community. A member of the public said to me, 'This is going to blow up on this conservative government because when they don't find anything, when there's no proof, it'll be seen for what it is: a witch-hunt by a biased commissioner against good union people.

Question agreed to.