Who will stand up for Dyson Heydon, a man of honour?

THE outrageous and totally baseless attacks on the integrity of former High Court Justice Dyson Heydon can clearly serve only those who feel most threatened by his investigation into corrupt union practices.

That’s why it was so ­remarkable that members of the Labor Party publicly lined up with renegade trade unions in attempts to besmirch Commissioner Heydon’s unimpeachable reputation within minutes of dubious and ­extremely skewed reports ­appearing last week of his ­cancelled Sir Garfield Barwick address. Shadow Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, QC, and Labor manager of Opposition business, Tony Burke, joined the AWU and the CFMEU in ­insisting Mr Heydon had “disqualified himself” from remaining as head of the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption. “He is conflicted, he is biased, the royal commission is a farce,” Mr Burke told parliament. In light of hysterical sledging from Labor MPs, the ABC and the Fairfax press, it was telling that the most noteworthy defender of Commissioner Heydon’s reputation was left-wing lawyer Julian Burnside, a constant critic of conservative politics. In an interview with the ABC during which his interlocutor vainly attempted to tease out some criticism of the former judge, Mr Burnside ­defiantly stated the commissioner was “an honourable person” and he (Mr Burnside) didn’t “doubt his honesty and commonsense”. “I disagree with him on many things, I don’t doubt his honesty and his commonsense. So, you know, you have to be really slow-witted to think: ‘Well, I can come along and do a favour for the Liberal Party who appointed me to the Royal Commission and I can be seen to be doing an honest job of the Royal Commission’,” he said. Attempts to disrupt royal commissions are nothing new to Labor. When former WA Labor Premier Carmen Lawrence was the target of an inquiry regarding the suicide of Penny Easton 20 years ago, then Labor PM Paul Keating, Dr Lawrence and former WA Labor MP Stephen Smith all condemned the inquiry as politically motivated. Mr Smith went even further, warning that any judge who agreed to head the inquiry should be prepared for “political attack”. Among the first to slam Labor for these attacks was The Sydney Morning Herald, which then still retained a shred of respect for principle. In a November 5, 1995 editorial it stated: “The Labor Party should now drop its disgraceful threat to subject the commissioner (respected former judge Ken Marks, QC) to a personal and political campaign. This threat took the form of the federal Labor MP Mr Stephen Smith saying that any judge who took on the inquiry would be personally and politically attacked by ‘the friends of Carmen Lawrence.’ Mr Smith insisted that ‘this was not an attack on judicial independence or a threat to it.’ This assertion, however, cannot be sustained. Mr Smith’s threat which amounts to an ALP version of a fatwa, is unprecedented in recent political history. The associate professor of politics at the University of WA, Professor Paddy O’Brien, has claimed Mr Smith’s comments come ‘perilously close’ to the criminal offence of threatening a judge.” Fairfax, like the ABC, is now a sheltered workshop where Leftist groupthink prevails. In recent days, Financial Review commentator Laura Tingle has agreed with the SMH’s Mark Kenny and Peter Hartcher that the Abbott government is essentially the worst since the McMahon and Whitlam periods — conveniently and laughably omitting any discussion of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd governments of more recent and even more disastrous record. The commentary has reflected an extraordinary level of bile, vitriol and loathing, some of it totally inaccurate, dressed up as analysis such as Kenny’s shamefully disrespectful claim that “ … hours this week alone have been devoted to bloated speech-making about deceased former MPs”. What the unions, the ABC and Fairfax apparently dislike is that if it were not for this royal commission, we would not know the CFMEU was secretly skimming off hundreds of thousands of dollars, in the form of half an employer levy meant for a drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility; or that the CFMEU had been forced to repay $80,000 to the facility that it wrongly claimed as its own after the Australian Building and Construction Commission investigated its dealings. Were the commission to be aborted as the ACTU and some Labor MPs are demanding, we would never know whether Opposition leader Bill Shorten used his position as AWU secretary to secure the donations for his 2007 Maribyrnong campaign which he failed to disclose publicly; or why he failed to disclose more than $40,000 in donations from labour hire firm UniBilt and his own AWU towards his 2007 Maribyrnong campaign until just two days before his commission appearance. We need to know why Shorten used WorkChoices to abolish penalty rates for cleaners; whether he negotiated a deal by which Thiess John Holland paid his union $300,000 plus GST and if the payments were the price of industrial peace. Evidence to the commission shows the payments were for training that was delivered by the company (at no cost), ads that did not actually appear in the AWU magazine, and back-strain research that appears not to have been done. Tomorrow, the government is likely to press ahead with legislation restoring the ABCC, the construction industry watchdog abolished by the Gillard government. This legislation will test Labor but it is an essential tool in the fight against union corruption. Commissioner Heydon’s as yet unfinished inquiry has shown why it must pass.