The trade union royal commission has set aside two weeks for further hearings into the Australian Workers’ Union (AWU) next month, but says it is not planning to recall Bill Shorten to the witness stand “at this stage”.
The commission, led by Dyson Heydon, said affected parties might seek permission to cross-examine Shorten and such requests would be considered “in due course”.
Shorten, the Labor leader, was questioned for two days in Sydney in July about his pre-parliamentary career as the national and Victorian secretary of the AWU.
The questions from the counsel assisting the inquiry, Jeremy Stoljar SC, focused on payments from companies to the AWU and allegations of conflicts of interest arising from parallel enterprise bargaining negotiations on behalf of workers.
Heydon, who at one point questioned Shorten’s credibility as a witness, was subsequently involved in a political and legal storm over his initial acceptance of an invitation to be the keynote speaker at a Liberal party event.
Labor, which had long argued the inquiry was set up by the former prime minister, Tony Abbott, as a political witchhunt, failed to secure adequate numbers in the Senate to pass an extraordinary motion urging the governor general to sack Heydon.
Unions applied to Heydon to disqualify himself on the grounds of apprehended bias, but the former high court judge rejected the request and pushed ahead with hearings into the CFMEU.
This week, hearings in Brisbane have heard claims that CFMEU officials were involved in the destruction of documents that may have been needed by the inquiry.
The CFMEU’s national vice-president, Michael Ravbar, told the commission on Thursday the union had been cleaning out a “phenomenal” amount of excess material due to a merger, and did not see the inquiry’s notice to produce documents until the following day. Ravbar is a member of the Labor party’s national executive.
The commission issued a statement on Thursday saying it had set aside 10 days for Sydney hearings into the AWU between 12 and 23 October.
“At this stage the commission does not propose to recall Mr Shorten as a witness,” it said.
“However, during the course of the inquiry, affected parties may seek authorisation to cross examine Mr Shorten. In the event that such an application is made, it will be considered in due course.”
Shorten faced questions about the AWU allegations during his appearance on the ABC’s Q&A program on Monday.
The Labor leader said he had “answered over 900 questions” in July and would not automatically resign if the final report, due in December, made adverse findings about him. He maintained the government had set up the inquiry “to smear its political rivals”.
“I know what I’ve done. I know that I’ve stood up for workers. I know that I’ve been happy to accept scrutiny for what I do,” Shorten said.
“I offer myself for the highest position in the land in our democracy, so I accept scrutiny, but what I don’t accept is that it’s worth $60m to second guess whether or not you pay someone a casual rate or a penalty rate on a Sunday and have every sort of industrial negotiation second-guessed by barristers who are paid $3.5m. It’s nonsense.”
On Wednesday, the commission called for submissions on the Health Services Union matters involving former national secretaries Kathy Jackson and Craig Thomson.
The royal commission had previously faced criticism from some Labor figures for its treatment of Jackson, amid accusations it had spared her from criticism in the interim report and helped her prepare for questions.
Shorten alluded to this on Monday when he said did not think the royal commission had been a level playing field because it “was helping prepare witnesses they like to answer questions”.
In August, a federal court judge ordered Jackson to pay the HSU about $1.4m after finding she had used funds from the National Health Development Account without authorisation.
The commission said Heydon had indicated in the interim report last year that he would wait until the final report to make findings on the HSU matters given the outstanding legal proceedings.
“Given that federal court trials involving Ms Jackson and Mr Thomson have concluded, affected parties are now being given the opportunity to provide further submissions on these matters,” the commission said on Wednesday.
The Australian Council of Trade Unions had considered applying to the high court or federal court to pursue its claims about Heydon’s apprehended bias, but decided against doing so.
