Bill Shorten HSU ally under scrutiny

She controls important numbers for Bill Shorten, but questions are being asked about the method used to get union boss Diana Asmar re-elected.

Diana Asmar with retiring senator Stephen Conroy at the swearing in of Kimberley Kitching in 2016.

One of Bill Shorten’s main union allies is under investigation for ­allegedly approving annual leave for employed officials so they could work on her re-election campaign — and then reinstating the time off as untaken leave when she won.

Diana Asmar, secretary of the Health Services Union’s branch No 1 in Victoria, has been targeted for investigation by the Registered Organisations Commission following what is believed to be a whistleblower’s complaint.

Ms Asmar, who controls important numbers bolstering the Opposition Leader’s Right faction in the Victorian ALP, is alleged to have approved the annual leave for HSU organisers in the lead-up to branch elections in late 2014.

According to matters referred to the ROC, the nation’s workplace regulator, her organisers could then work full-time helping the campaign of Ms Asmar and her election team, to which they belonged.

Mr Asmar won 90 per cent of the vote among a large field of candidates vying for control of the HSU’s largest Victorian branch, which she has unofficially rebranded the “Health Workers Union” to create distance from its “poisonous” past links with corruption under predecessors.

Organisers who helped Ms Asmar while on leave allegedly had their leave balances restored on their return to work after the election.

Ms Asmar at a union rally in 2015.

Under workplace laws, union officials are employed to represent workers and are not permitted to use work hours for electioneering.

Taking time off as paid or unpaid leave is permitted for election campaigning, but any subsequent restoration of leave taken for non-union business, if proven, would be regarded as “double-dipping” and could raise questions about possible deception and fraud.

Ms Asmar told The Weekend Australian that her branch had received a request from the ROC for information but she said she was confident there was “no breach of our legal obligations”.

“The branch auditor is in the process of reviewing our records and assembling the information required by the ROC,” she said.

The ROC’s investigation was discussed by HSU leaders this week at a national executive meeting in Brisbane after the ACTU congress in the same city. Ms Asmar attended neither event.

HSU national secretary Gerard Hayes confirmed the ROC had made inquiries to the union’s national office about Ms Asmar.

“The union is complying with its obligations and observing the principle of due process,” Mr Hayes said.

Ms Asmar became embroiled in another controversy over leave arrangements when The Australian revealed in November 2016 that she had cashed out her 12 weeks’ maternity leave. She cashed out the $25,975 mat­ernity leave in the 2015 financial year after the birth of her second child. She cashed $24,035 of accrued annual leave in the same year, topping up her then $180,000 salary by $50,000. The maternity leave cash-out was legal, and Ms Asmar said at the time that her branch committee had relied on legal advice in approving the payout.

But she faced heavy criticism from employment and gender experts and former ACTU president Jennie George for the “unprecedented” course of using an ­entitlement for cash that was always intended as time-off to help new mothers, not a “double dip” cash bonus.

As well as being allied to Mr Shorten, Ms Asmar is close to Victorian senator Kimberley Kitching, a former general manager of Ms Asmar’s branch.

Ms Asmar’s husband, David, is an adviser to the senator.