Concetta Fierravanti-Wells (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—In recent weeks I have been detailing in the Senate matters concerning the member for Dobell and his disgraceful behaviour. I have raised concerns about him being missing in action and about being the member you have when you do not have a member. Poor petal! It appears that I have upset him. In the Central Coast Express Advocate of 19 September, Mr Thomson denies he is Dobell's absentee MP. His excuse is that his appearance at events would ruin them for organisers because of the intense media scrutiny. What a poor excuse. The fact is that he is afraid of media scrutiny. He knows the questions about his conduct are mounting and he does not want to answer those questions.

Last week we were told that he would be making a statement to the parliament. We are all still waiting. And he does have some very serious questions to answer. This is the man who has denied abusing the Salvation Army worker at the 'No pokies' tax rally at Mingara on 15 August, despite witnesses asserting the opposite. This is the man who tried to lobby a Central Coast firm to give his ex-wife a job at the same time as they were seeking federal funding for a jobs incubator. But, when things did not go his way, he got nasty and started making threats. This is also the man who set up Coastal Voice, supposedly as a community group, the principal activity being a volunteer aged-care hotline. In reality, it was just a front to get him preselected and the Health Services Union picked up the tab. This is the man who subsequently lied about quitting from Coastal Voice, when the New South Wales Fair Trading records—

John Hogg (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Fierravanti-Wells, you will need to withdraw that. You cannot accuse a person. It is unparliamentary to use that language about a person in this place or in the other place.

Concetta Fierravanti-Wells (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr President. I withdraw those comments. This is the man who made certain comments about quitting from Coastal Voice, when the New South Wales Fair Trading records still show him as a public officer of the association. As we know, Coastal Voice is currently in the process of having its registration cancelled. We will watch with interest as this matter progresses.

Then of course there was this little gem in the Central CoastExpress Advocate of 26 August, entitled 'Carpark Quarrel'. I quote:

DOBELL Federal Labor MP Craig Thomson can't take a trick. He has even come under fire over parking his car.

A parking spot outside his electoral office at Westfield Tuggerah originally was allocated for parents with prams.

But it has been rebranded as 24-hour Commonwealth Government parking—sparking controversy on Sydney

radio.

Yet another incident, entitled 'Bus owner claims MPs owe $40,000', was reported in the Central CoastExpress Advocate on 26 August:

EMBATTLED Dobell MP Craig Thomson and his Robertson counterpart Deb O'Neill are denying claims they owe almost $40,000 for buses they used during last year's election campaign.

The bill is for damage allegedly caused to the outside of the vehicles by advertising for the MPs.

Ms O'Neill has been billed $12,800 while the owner claims Mr Thomson owes $25,280 for ad damage and mechanical repairs.

The article says that the ALP is disputing the claim by the owner of the buses. We will watch how this one travels.

Of course, as we know, this is the man who, together with Labor heavyweight Michael Williamson, has well and truly abused his position in the Health Services Union through the misuse of union fees for prostitutes, trips and all sorts of other things which I am sure the Victorian and NSW Police will elicit.

This evening I would like to concentrate on the victims of this abuse of funds and say this: if it is happening in the HSU, you can bet your bottom dollar it is happening in other unions. Only time will tell how far the stench from the HSU will extend.

The Australian Financial Review of 17 September, in an article entitled 'Unions, greed and power—Labor's fatal flaw', stated:

Corruption and an ugly factional brawl go to the heart of the federal government's great weakness.

The article's headline says it all:

Gross evidence of self-entitled union officials whose pay wildly exceeds expectations will damage the union movement and a besieged ALP.

As the article correctly points out:

Let's be clear about the fallout so far from the allegations of kickbacks, and of former national secretary Craig Thomson using a union credit card to buy sex from prostitutes. The allegations have been denied but they have damaged the union "brand". The damage comes because unions have been banging on for years about "excessive" executive salaries and the like, but here are allegations of selfish rorting against a union that mostly represents lowpaid hospital workers including cleaners and people pushing trolleys around wards.

Unions are not supposed to revolve around a culture of entitlement. Not self-entitlement anyway. They are supposed to ensure that workers get the entitlements they deserve.

Whilst membership of the HSU has been built around a nucleus of hospital staff and psychiatric care staff, it has gone much further to include ambulance officers, aged-care workers, community health workers, workers in the disability sector, hospital scientists, mental health workers and drug and alcohol workers, many of whom I have had the privilege to meet in my role as shadow minister for ageing and shadow minister for mental health. The website makes two interesting points. Firstly, that the Health Services Union has a rich and proud history as Australia's most representative health union. But, sadly for the membership, the likes of Craig Thomson and Michael Williamson have well and truly tarnished its reputation. Secondly, it states that there has been one consistent aim over the years: to act as powerful collectives of workers seeking to secure the best possible wages and conditions in their industries.

Given that we are dealing with some of the lowest paid workers in the health sector, a fact which Mr Thomson himself acknowledged in his maiden speech, the headline of the Australian, dated 15 September, is 'Hard-up members pay dues but life's good at the top'. It goes on:

WHILE aged-care and ambulance workers earning as little as $15 an hour stump up for Health Services Union membership fees, union boss Michael Williamson is living the good life.

This is a man who is rumoured to receive moneys from a variety of sources, including: a quarter of a million dollars a year as general-secretary of HSU East; $20,000 as president of the national branch of the HSU; tens of thousands of dollars in fees for company directorships; and $34,300 for sitting on the board of the state water corporation, a position that he was appointed to in the dying stages of the New South Wales Labor government.

The article states:

...the head of HSU East—which predominantly oversees the union's NSW operations, also owns one-third of IT company United Edge, which received $2.36 million in HSU East contracts in the last two years to last September.

The article goes on to say:

While many of the HSU's 60,000 members working in health and aged-care receive modest incomes, Mr Wilkinson has been living well. According to property searches, he bought a $522,000 property on the NSW central coast last year. Titles records show that property was adjacent to a lot he purchased for $470,000 five years earlier.

Mr Williamson is understood to have recently built a new house on the site, worth about $700,000.

He receives undisclosed payments for his role as non-executive director of First State Super. And as chairman of public sector financial services provider State Government Employees Credit Union, he was one of seven officials collectively paid $2.26m last year.

Mr Williamson is chairman of SGE and has been a board member since July 2003. It is interesting to note that his Maroubra property is mortgaged to the SGE Credit Union Limited. Not surprisingly, Mr Thomson and his wife also have a mortgage with SGE Credit Union. It would be interesting to note the terms of any loans made to either Mr Thomson or Mr Williamson that gave rise to their respective mortgages and whether it was on the same terms as other health industry workers received or at mates' rates.

The 15 September article concludes with the following:

It was not clear whether he personally benefited from those directorship payments or whether that money was handed to the HSU.

So let us look at some of these directorships. Mr Williamson was a director of Private Hospitals Superannuation Pty Ltd from 8 January 1996 until 22 January 1997. Then there is J. & M. Williamson Investments Pty Ltd. Mr Williamson and his wife have been directors since 13 November 2007. He has also been a director of Imaging Partners Online Limited since 7 May 2008.

Since 11 December 2007, he has also been a director and the secretary of United Edge Pty Ltd. The registered office and principal place of business of United Edge is Level 2, 109 Pitt Street Sydney, which coincidentally is the registered office of HSU East. A Sydney Morning Herald article of 17 September details various payments that have been made to United Edge, which supplied computer and IT services to the HSU. As the article says, United Edge is based in the HSU's headquarters. It pays no rent and it won the IT contract without going to tender. The article outlines starkly the modus operandi of this man, now a former ALP president and vice-president:

One of his colleagues on the First State Super board is Peter Mylan, the assistant secretary of the New South Wales branch of the HSU, who Williamson says approved the union's purchase of the IT system from his boss's company. The Herald has learnt that for more than a year union members were paying twice for software systems. A Victorian IT company, which had the contract to provide software to maintain a membership management system, was being paid $15,000 a month to supply the Victorian branch of the HSU. But United Edge was also submitting bills for the same service. Since the departure of the previous IT company, which billed the HSU around $140,000 a year, the payments to United Edge are topping the million-dollar—a tenfold increase.

Then the article talks about the free advertising in the union's newsletters to spruik phone deals for members. It goes on about other party related transactions. The article goes on to list a litany of conflicts of this 'million dollar man'.

More recently, on 1 July, Mr Williamson was appointed director of Health Super Financial Services Pty Ltd. Mr Thomson served as National Secretary of the HSU from 2002 until he resigned on 14 December 2007. The fate of Mr Thomson and his mentor Mr Williamson are inextricably wound up in an ever increasing web of abuse of union funds and alleged mismanagement. Last week, the Sydney Morning Heraldreported that Mr Williamson and Mr Thomson allegedly received secret commissions from a major supplier to their union. The two men had previously been provided with American Express cards by John Gilleland, who runs a graphic design business. The credit cards were issued in the names of Mr Thomson and Mr Williamson but were attached to Mr Gilleland's account. The Sydney Morning Herald article of 17 September states:

At an HSU function this year, Gilleland's wife, Carron, privately complained to senior union officials that Williamson had "run amok" with the credit card. According to one official, Carron Gilleland said, 'He even paid his private school fees on it" and "this was not part of the deal". Offering or receiving a benefit as an inducement to act in a certain way in business dealings may constitute a criminal offence.

The article reports that, according to the HSU's accounts for 2009-10, John and Canon Gilleland received about $680,000 a year to produce 10 issues of the union's newsletter, Health Standard. These figures were up to 10 times the amount other unions paid for similar things, industry sources said. Obviously, the Australian Labor Party has a long and unhappy history with printing companies. I seem to recall Offset Printing and the end of other Labor luminaries.

The Gillelands too have an interesting corporate history. The Sydney Morning Herald article of 17 September states:

The Health Standard's producer, John Gilleland, has a colourful past. In 1984 he and his brother, Ian, were arrested by federal police over their alleged role in using their printing company to produce counterfeit German currency. The quality of the notes was so good that they were given a seven out of 10 rating by the Reserve Bank. While John Gilleland was acquitted by a jury on 1986, at a subsequent trial, Ian was found guilty and sentenced to five years jail.

Undeterred, John Gilleland became director of Edley Pty Ltd in 1989 and his wife became a director in March 1993. In March 1993 he also became a director of Carron McDonald and Associates Pty Ltd. John and Carron Gilleland became directors of another company, Communigraphix Pty Ltd—the company in question—in March 1996 and have been directors since that date. In 1997 its principal place of business was located at 142 Avalon Parade, Avalon. Then in November 1998, the principal place of business of Communigraphix became a lovely waterfront property located at 156 Hudson Parade and overlooking Clareville Beach on the northern beaches of Sydney. Clearly, the printing business was paying well. In November 1998, he also became a director of Baxter Manning Group Pty Ltd. In February 2001, this company was deregistered and he ceased to be a director. In 1999, Edley Pty Ltd subsequently went into liquidation with the Supreme Court appointing a liquidator. The company was deregistered in December 1999. Despite this financial setback, the principal place of Communigraphix was moved to 909 Barrenjoey Road, Palm Beach, which is a lovely two-storey house overlooking Careel Bay and Pittwater. It is clear that by this stage the printing business was paying very well. Then, in January 2008, John and Carron Gilleland were appointed directors of another company, CGX Media, also located at the Palm Beach abode.

The article concludes:

Meanwhile, some of the HSU rank and file, among the lowest paid of all unionists, wonder where their $570 annual membership fee is going.

Many contacted the Herald during the week to express their concerns about the unchecked excesses. No doubt the Victorian and NSW police will investigate these alleged 'secret commissions' and shed some light on it.

Of course, the latest is the disaffiliation of the HSU from the ALP, clearly designed to distance the Gillard government from the increasing quagmire that is now the Thomson affair, which was so starkly described by Kathy Jackson on Lateline the other evening as 'some scene from Married to the Mob'. She said:

It's just ridiculous. You could sell tickets to this.

Ms Jackson rightly points out that her members want answers and that Mr Thomson and others are not giving those answers, but there is no sign that this will change in the foreseeable future.

But, alas, I have deviated for a considerable time from my theme of 'Who is representing the people of Dobell?' On the last occasion, I foreshadowed an event at the new Soldiers Beach surf club on 16 September. This club cost $3.5 million, with the federal government funding $2.5 million. But was the member for Dobell there along with other Labor luminaries? No, of course not. He sent his apologies, despite it being a non-sitting day. It was a pity that Mr Thomson was not there to hear about the great work that the club does and, most especially, their Sun, Surf and Safety campaign and their Drink and Sink campaign. I am sure that Mr Thomson must be having the odd sinking feeling himself at the moment.

Then there was a No Carbon Tax Rally last Friday organised in Dobell, where again that sinking feeling was on show. Despite the 24 hours notice, a vocal group turned up to assemble at the Caltex-Woolworths service station near the Westfield Shopping Centre for a march to the vicinity of Craig Thomson's office, located in the Westfield Shopping Centre, only to be met by security men in dark suits. Clearly, these men from Westfield were there to protect Mr Thomson and preclude the protesters from exercising their democratic right to protest, or at least to protest in the vicinity of Mr Thomson's office. As if this were not enough, we also had the local constabulary out in force—yes, three cars, to be precise. In the end, the protest took place on a grassy area adjacent to the entry to the Westfield Shopping Centre, much to the delight of the passing motorists who joined in the spirit of protest as they shouted chants of support from their cars. Back to that sinking feeling. The message was clear from the banner 'Labor MPs choose your electorate and survive or go with the sinking PM' or this one:

Craig, Quit NOW become a national hero!

For your family, your electorate and the nation.

Now they are using you. Tomorrow they will forget you.

Despite this salutary advice, Craig Thomson did not appear. I assume he heard us, but he chose not to attend and listen directly to the concerns of people protesting about the impact of this toxic tax on his electorate.

Back in the days of Coastal Voice, he was all about seeking 'opinions of central coast residents on key community issues'. Not so now. Having become the member for Dobell on the back of misleading conduct and having enjoyed the spoils of victory on the back of the hard-earned union dues paid by low-paid health workers, he does not have time to listen to community views anymore. He is too busy dodging the media and the hard questions about his abuse of union funds.

Mr Thomson, when will this self-imposed exile end? Does this mean that you will not be attending the round of end-of-year school presentations in Dobell? I understand that there are 47 schools in the electorate of Dobell. I will be very surprised if you attend one school presentation, the way you are going.

Mr Thomson is indeed missing in action. The people of Dobell do not have a member at the moment, and I suspect that, given the mounting controversies, it will be a long time before Craig Thomson returns to represent his constituents full time.

Senate adjourned at 20: 49