Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Employment (Senator Abetz) and the Minister for Human Services (Senator Payne) to questions without notice asked by Opposition senators today.

I want to pay particular attention to Senator Abetz's disgraceful continuing covering for and protecting Michael Lawler. The Liberal Party hand-picked the vice-president of the Fair Work Commission without public scrutiny and they continue to protect him from public scrutiny and accountability. In his role at Fair Work, Mr Lawler is responsible for upholding the values of our legal system and society in relation to critical matters of industrial relations. But Mr Lawler's conduct over the last five years can only be described as extraordinary: taking extreme amounts of leave, nine out of the last 12 months, at the expense of the taxpayer; breaching judicial codes and practice standards; attracting formal investigations into his behaviour—and all while presiding over a sharply declining number of matters before the Fair Work Commission. Lawler has proven himself unfit for the office which he holds.

Mr Lawler is of course the partner of none other than the disgraced union fraudster Kathy Jackson. Senator Abetz has described Kathy Jackson as a courageous person who should be applauded. But watch Senator Abetz squirm away from that ringing endorsement now that Jackson has been exposed as having misappropriated $1.4 million from the Health Services Union and its members. Right by Ms Jackson's side throughout her plundering of union members' money has been Mr Lawler, a person charged with protecting the integrity of our industrial relations system.

Relentless work by Pamela Williams at the Australian newspaper has uncovered the extent to which Mr Lawler has benefited from Ms Jackson's crimes. That is right: while taking home nearly half a million dollars in taxpayer-funded salary, despite taking nine months of unexplained sick leave, Michael Lawler has benefited from the proceeds of crime. Recent proceedings against Jackson in the Federal Court uncovered damning evidence of stolen money being used to finance Jackson's luxury Melbourne home during 2008. Faced in court with this evidence, Jackson had no choice but to admit to paying off her mortgage with stolen HSU money. She admitted it in court. In mid-2012, Lawler and Jackson moved out of Jackson's luxury Melbourne home and moved to the New South Wales coast, where they purchased a $1.3 million home in Wombarra. In October 2013, when Jackson finalised the sale of her luxury Melbourne home, the same home that she had financed using stolen HSU money, the net profits of this sale were more than $620,000. She took the money and, in three separate transactions in October 2013, paid down the mortgage on her Wombarra home.

In October 2014, supposedly while on sick leave from the Fair Work Commission, Mr Lawler transferred 50 per cent of Ms Jackson's Wombarra home into his own name. He took advantage of the New South Wales property laws to avoid any money changing hands as well as to prevent any stamp duty from being paid on the transfer. But at that moment, in his greed, he received ownership of a property purchased with the proceeds of crime. The money trail leads straight from the HSU to Jackson's Melbourne mortgage, then on to financing the Wombarra mortgage, the home that Mr Lawler now includes as one of his own assets. Lawler is living off the proceeds of crime. He owns a house bought with money stolen from union members. So this government, Senator Abetz and Mr Turnbull should stop protecting Mr Lawler and work with the opposition to restore the integrity of the Fair Work Commission.