Concetta Fierravanti-Wells (NSW, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

I have to say that those opposite have absolutely no shame whatsoever. Today, on the day you have put up this motion, your former president, Michael Williamson, has been remanded in custody. You have put up this motion as Craig Thomson is awaiting sentencing after being found guilty of fraud and deception. Those opposite have absolutely no shame whatsoever, coming into this place today with this absolutely absurd motion. I would have thought, Senator Wong, that experience would have told you this sort of behaviour is totally inappropriate. Here you are today, bleating about this and making accusations about Senator Nash. I would remind you that you sat there for 18 months while the then Minister Carr was foreign minister. You were not concerned about his shareholdings, were you? And let's not forget that Bob Carr owned a lobbying company the whole time that he was minister, despite that being against the Standards of Ministerial Ethics. Documents in the former Prime Minister's office on this issue mysteriously disappeared after Julia Gillard was deposed.

I would remind those opposite that Bob Carr was the sole owner of a lobbying company, R J Carr Pty Ltd, for the entire 18 months that he was foreign minister. He claimed it was dormant, but this still contravened former Prime Minister Gillard's Standards of Ministerial Ethics, which required divestment. Section 2.9, dealing with shareholdings, requires:

… that Ministers divest themselves of investments and other interests in any public or private company or business …

R J Carr Pty Ltd was listed with the Australian Securities and Investment Commission as operating from Senator Carr's electorate office, until Senator Fifield raised this in estimates. In answer to a question on notice, former Prime Minister Gillard said that then Senator Bob Carr's:

… arrangements are consistent with the standards of ministerial office.

That was a blatant lie, unless she was evasively quibbling with the word 'office,' as opposed to the Standards of Ministerial Ethics.

Senator Abetz FOI-ed the relevant documents on this matter from former Prime Minister Gillard's office. He was told that they were not official documents of the minister. However, the Information Commissioner formed the preliminary view that they were indeed official documents. Despite former Prime Minister Rudd—on replacing then Prime Minister Gillard—securing the documents, a search conducted in August 2012 found the documents were no longer held. Those opposite come in here today and make accusations, when this saga shows Labor flouted ministerial standards and resorted to covering its tracks by losing documents which should have been held.

I now turn to the issue of Mr Thomson and Mr Williamson. There is no doubt that those opposite had been running a protection racket and that has been bandied about. That is precisely what they have done in recent years. There have been any number of quotes on the record where people were asked about Mr Thomson and his activities. As those opposite know, I have spent considerable time, since August 2011, delving into these matters in a lot of detail.

August 2011 was the first time I spoke on the record on this matter. I talked at that time about Mr Thomson's legal costs and asserted that they could be up to one-quarter of a million dollars and invited then senator Mark Arbib, who obviously knew a lot about it, to tell us all about it. He sat there time and time again, after I made this allegation, and said absolutely nothing. Why? Because those opposite knew precisely that the Labor Party was protecting Mr Thomson and paying his legal fees. Indeed, as Senator Dastyari has virtually admitted, the legal costs were about $350,000. Yet those opposite sat there and protected Mr Thomson. You have quote after quote where people, such as Ms Gillard, Dr Emerson, Mr Albanese and many other Labor figures, repeatedly showed their support for the then member for Dobell.

Let us look at those legal fees. Surely, the Labor Party must have known the weasel words that Mr Thomson was putting on the Register of Members' Interests. We know that he failed twice to disclose interests on the register of interests, including in relation to his legal fees. His correspondence to the registrar was carefully couched, only referring to a sum of money being paid. He also stated that he had an open account with Kalantzis Lawyers. The register of interests also disclosed that he had no interest in real estate and that his home was owned by his wife. The other day the Darlinghurst offices of Schapelle Corby's lawyer, Bill Kalantzis—interestingly, the same law firm as Mr Thomson's—was raided by the AFP last week amidst speculation of the $2 million paid by Channel 7. Perhaps the AFP should have looked a little bit harder; they may have found some Thomson documents.

I now return to the issue of Mr Thomson and the protection of him by those opposite. I have pursued this matter, particularly in relation to documents held by a Senate committee relevant to the Fair Work Australia report. Those opposite, when in government, protected those documents and refused their release. When I sought documents on matters relating to the jobs incubator on the Central Coast, Minister Kim Carr—who stood here today asking questions about Senator Nash—sat there and protected Mr Thomson, along with their Green alliance partners over there, who always talk about transparency and bleat about openness in government, and refused disclosure of those documents.

Indeed, as I have repeatedly said, those opposite will do everything they possibly can to ensure that those documents relevant to the Fair Work Australia report—there are eight folders—are not released, because they have something to hide. That is why those documents have not been released. The short question that I ask those opposite is: who knew what and when, and what should they have known about both Mr Williamson and Mr Thomson that they hid for so many years?

It is hypocrisy to come into this place today, on the very day that your former HSU president has been remanded in custody on a range of fraud and deception of the HSU membership and on the day that we are awaiting the sentencing of Mr Thomson, who has also been found guilty of fraud and deception. We all know the old proverb that a fish stinks from the head down. As far as the Labor Party is concerned, this is very much the case. When you have your president engaging in the sort of corrupt behaviour Mr Williamson was engaging in—as well as people who head unions like the HSU, like Mr Thomson—it shows how deep the corruption must go in the union movement and those it supports on the other side. That is why I would like to conclude my comments by saying that this is precisely the reason there is a need for a royal commission into the alleged financial irregularities associated with the affairs of the trade union movement. And that is why it is vitally important that we establish the Registered Organisations Commission to introduce some effective governance for trade unions and to help prevent such conduct occurring in the future.