Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

As a former National Secretary of the AWU between 2001 and 2007, Victorian State Secretary from 1998 to 2007, and Victorian state president of the Labor Party from 2005 until 2008, the honourable Labor leader was a person of great interest to the royal commission into union corruption. The royal commission into union corruption heard that Mr Shorten accepted and failed to disclose large donations to himself from employers while negotiating for the union on behalf of employees—secret commissions to rip off his fellow union members.

The Leader of the Opposition admitted to the commission that he had failed to declare a political donation of around $40,000 from a labour hire company in the lead-up to the 2007 election campaign and that invoices regarding the payments for services were not truthful. Mr Shorten, however, claimed to have no knowledge of false invoicing totalling more than $300,000, which had been sent to construction company Thiess John Holland—a very convenient form of collective amnesia. These so-called donations were undeclared, because they were a pay-off—a pay-off to agree to lowering the wages and conditions of his already poorly-paid union members. No wonder he wanted them kept secret. So let us be clear: the leader of a major union and now the self-styled leader of the so-called workers party took secret commissions from employers to sell his own union members down the river.

During the royal commission into trade union corruption, under cross-examination, counsel assisting and the commissioner, Mr Heydon QC, said that the honourable Leader of the Opposition was being 'evasive' and 'non- responsive'. Evasive and unresponsive—it is hardly surprising, is it? I mean, if he was honest, he would have to admit that he had betrayed his fellow union members, just like Craig Thomson, Michael Williamson and Kathy Jackson.