Labor has written to the prime minister, Tony Abbott, calling on him to reveal how much former high court justice Dyson Heydon is receiving to head up the royal commission into trade union corruption.
Labor has gone on the attack over the royal commissioner’s decision to speak at a Liberal party fundraiser, saying it raises questions about perceived bias.
“In addition to the concerns held by the federal opposition and broader community about this action, which is contrary to the strict standards of impartiality expected of a royal commissioner, the opposition also holds serious concerns about the complete failure by the Abbott government to publicly account for commissioner Heydon’s taxpayer-funded remuneration,” the shadow workplace relations minister, Brendan O’Connor, wrote in the letter.
“I can only conclude that the true motivation for concealing commissioner Heydon’s remuneration is a desire to prevent the Australian public from fully discovering the large amount of public money that your government is spending on your politically motivated royal commission,” O’Connor wrote.
In February it was revealed that the government was paying the lead lawyer in the commission, Jeremy Stoljar, $3.36m for less than two years’ work.
Heydon had been billed as the keynote speaker at the Sir Garfield Barwick address this month, an event organised by the Liberal party of New South Wales. He has since pulled out, saying he did not realise it was a party political event when he signed on.
The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) may take Heydon to the high court over his decision to speak at the event. The president of the ACTU, Ged Kearney, has called on Abbott to sack Heydon.
She has not ruled out taking the matter to the high court, with the ACTU telling Guardian Australia that it is “assessing all of its options” and that it is “awaiting legal advice on the matter”.
Government frontbenchers rallied around Heydon, a former high court justice, on Sunday. The justice minister, Michael Keenan, said Labor was inflating the “minor matter” to derail the royal commission, which has grilled the Labor heavyweights Julia Gillard and Bill Shorten.
“They’re keen to have this enormous distraction on an issue that essentially amounts to absolutely nothing,” Keenan told the conservative commentator Andrew Bolt.
The justice minister shot down suggestions that Heydon would be sacked, forcing the inquiry to start again from scratch. “The commission will be allowed to continue its very important work,” he said, adding that Heydon had quickly corrected his “error of judgment” and that was the end of it.
“I don’t think this is an important matter,” he said.
The attorney general, George Brandis, said Heydon was a man of “stainless integrity” and casting doubt on his impartiality was a “terrible overreach by the Labor party”.
“Mr Heydon’s conduct has been unimpeachable,” Brandis told Sky News on Sunday. “As soon as he found out that there’s a Liberal party association with this lecture, the Sir Garfield Barwick lecture, he immediately pulled out. I don’t think this is anywhere close to the legal test for ostensible bias.”
The attorney general protested against the classification of the address. “It can hardly be a fundraiser if it raised no funds,” he said.
Labor said that was not the point. “It doesn’t really matter how much money was raised by the Liberal party,” O’Connor told ABC’s Insiders program. “The NSW division of the Liberal party presented this as a fundraiser, there was a logo of the Liberal party, the cheques were to be made out to the Liberal party.
“That in itself meant he had an association with a political party, namely the Liberal party, that shows at the very least … an appearance of a conflict of interest,” he said.
“He must resign and disqualify himself from this position.”
Labor on Thursday lost a motion to censure the prime minister on the matter. O’Connor has vowed to continue pursuing it in parliament.
