Diana Asmar: Bill Shorten’s no 1 union mate

Union secretary Diana Asmar needs scrutiny.

Diana Asmar ‘cleaned up’ after Kathy Jackson at the HSU. Picture: Peter Ristevski

When Diana Asmar arrived in Sydney last week to attend a national council meeting of the scandal-prone Health Services Union, there was no hero’s welcome

If glowing accounts from Asmar and her supporters are to be believed, this was remiss of 50 delegates gathered at L’Aqua, the exclusive Darling Harbour venue chosen by the council.

For Asmar, secretary of the HSU No1 branch in Victoria, has supposedly worked wonders.

Incriminating evidence exposing alleged corruption by the now disgraced former HSU leader Kathy Jackson “only emerged” because Asmar recaptured control of the branch, according to Melbourne-based federal Labor MP Michael Danby. In a Facebook post, Danby said Asmar assembled “all” the evidence about Jackson that was provided to the royal commission into union corruption, the police and journalists.

“Almost by a miracle Diana and her associates were able to patiently reconstitute the union’s shredded documents,” said Danby.

There’s more. Since 2012, Asmar has “nearly doubled” the branch’s membership according to one Asmar group-fed newspaper report. Asmar fan and campaigner Andrew Landeryou said on Facebook that she had turned around the branch: hers is “the only branch of the entire union running a surplus”.

Landeryou added: “Where there was corruption, she’s brought integrity. Where there was a lack of commitment, she’s brought passion. Where there was neglect, she’s brought relentless action.”

The poetry aside, unions across Australia are presumably dying to learn Asmar’s secret. Just how did she expose the rottenness in the HSU? How did she double her branch’s membership when most unions are in miserable decline? And what is the key to the breathtaking financial prowess of an individual representing some of the lowest paid workers in the nation — hospital orderlies, kitchen hands and cleaners on $30,000 to $40,00 a year?

Ex-HSU boss Kathy Jackson. Picture: David Geraghty

Sadly, none of Asmar’s colleagues seem interested — but for a good reason: they know the claims are rubbish.

After years of scandal, it is true the HSU is undergoing rehabilitation as its national executive team tries to ensure proper oversight and accountability across all state branches. Former leaders Michael Williamson and Craig Thomson have been convicted for their crimes. Jackson could end up in jail if criminal charges against her are proven.

But Asmar had nothing to do with exposing Jackson’s wrongs. Indeed her branch remains the embarrassment of the HSU, like a problem child who will not listen.

The HSU wants to expunge a past culture of entitlement and excess. What bothers the HSU’s leadership team, from its national secretary Chris Brown down, is that the culture could still be alive and well in Asmar’s HSU No1 branch.

Similar to the years when Jackson and her then husband Jeff ran the HSU’s No 3 and No1 branches together as political allies of Bill Shorten, Asmar’s branch after a period in administration has become a plaything to help control numbers in the Victorian ALP.

Asmar, backed by Landeryou and his wife, new Labor senator Kimberley Kitching, is a political operative loyal to Shorten. She became Shorten’s candidate to reclaim control of the HSU No1 branch after Shorten fell out with Jackson and her acolytes because Jackson refused to vote the way Shorten told her.

Asmar with Stephen Conroy.

At Asmar’s instigation, the HSU No1 branch will officially re-affiliate with the Victorian ALP this weekend after almost five years in the sin bin. It will be back in the political patronage game, helping to consolidate Shorten’s dominance of his Right faction now he is federal Opposition Leader after using the union movement as a stepping stone to power.

Asmar’s branch offers only a few extra votes on the all-important ALP candidates’ selection committee and about 26 on the state party conference floor, but Shorten’s numbers are tight so each one is valuable.

The HSU No1 branch already regards Kitching, previously Asmar’s general manager in the branch, as its candidate in parliament.

The silliness of incredible recent claims by Asmar and her supporters about their miracles is how they tempt scrutiny. It seems the creation of fantasies has been deemed as necessary propaganda to disguise what is really a lacklustre picture.

Asmar did provide some material about Jackson’s behaviour to Chris Brown for the HSU’s civil court damages case against her, and a police investigation. Brown found the material “totally useless”. He did nothing with it. Asmar had nothing new to provide to the royal commission.

As recently as February this year Asmar received a formal warning from the Fair Work Commission that there were “concerns about ongoing solvency”.

Brown put it explicitly in a 17-page report that the HSU No1 branch since Asmar’s arrival had “stumbled from crisis to crisis” — unlike the two other HSU branches at the centre of scandal but now recovered — the NSW branch led by former paramedic Gerard Hayes and the Victorian No3 branch headed by former radiographer Craig McGregor. Brown concluded his report with stern words for Asmar: “Dysfunctional branches can be dealt with. Branches can be dissolved.”

Brown sees no miracle. It was only because of a financial plan that he demanded with budget cuts, staff cuts and pay cuts after continued overspending by Asmar and Kitching that the HSU No1 branch was brought back from the brink.

The branch recorded a $451,000 surplus for the 2015-16 financial year. That would be the surplus lauded by Landeryou as the only one across all the union’s branches — a false claim. But Asmar’s surplus would still be yet another deficit if it were not for the forced sale of the branch’s $7 million building with proceeds to cover debts from overspending.

It is true, as Landeryou claims, that Asmar inherited a disaster. But once the building sale is considered, the equity position left behind by Jackson acolyte Marco Bolano was still better than it is now ($4.6m versus $1.3m now). Asmar and co. have lost about $3.3m in equity. And without the sale, they would still have a deficit.

One of Asmar’s bizarre claims is that 85 per cent of more than $1.7m in legal fees since 2012 has been “outside the control of the current leadership”. She cites $1.1m in past fees for court action and the Fair Work Commission; a $250,000 outlay for the royal commission and $100,000 for litigation related to get rid of past Asmar deputy and factional opponent Leonie Flynn.

The problem with claims of uncontrollable legal fees is that the biggest legal expenses by far ($1.1m for litigation and $251,000 for other matters) occurred during the 2015 financial year, smack in the middle of Asmar’s tenure.

Costly HWU recruitment billboards featuring Asmar.

Fair Work Commission legal spending has related mainly to allegations — denied by Asmar and Kitching but confirmed in a decision handed down by FWC vice-president Graeme Watson — that Asmar and Kitching broke the law when Kitching sat the required workplace entry permit tests of Asmar and five other officials. So these were legal costs that Asmar and Kitching could have avoided if they hadn’t been naughty — or spent as much.

It is puzzling to some HSU officials why Asmar needed to spend $250,000 on lawyers at the royal commission. The commission’s narrow focus was the right-of-entry tests, again a matter of Asmar and Kitching’s own behaviour.

Why Asmar needed to spend $100,000 of union members’ money fighting a legal battle to get rid of her deputy Flynn — in what was essentially an internal leadership faction war — is unclear and was possibly a pointless waste.

Another clue to the HSU No1 branch’s vulnerable cashflow is this: over six of the 12 months to September this year, the branch was not a financial affiliate of the national union. Despite receiving the dispensation of paying its annual affiliation fees monthly, the branch had no financial status for half the time.

One thing Asmar has done to get away from the bad past is to rebadge the No1 branch as the “Health Workers Union”. But the claim that Asmar has almost doubled her membership cannot be sustained.

At this week’s council, the branch was reported to have 12,632 members as of June 30 this year. In 2012 when Asmar was first elected, a total of 11,687 ballot papers were sent to eligible voters. Allowing for a small number of rejected and missing ballot papers, Asmar’s membership has increased by 10.3 per cent.

That’s a welcome boost, but it’s the least Asmar would have hoped after a membership drive based around a public hospital pay campaign, and huge sums she has spent on billboards around Victoria, including seven near the start of Melbourne’s airport freeway, showing the fluorescent-red haired Asmar. According to billboard company APN, the large billboards cost up to $60,000 a month — with an 80 per cent discount for “fire sale” pre-bookings. Smaller billboards cost $4000 a month. Asmar had a mix of large and small. They chewed up a lot of workers’ $500 annual membership fees.

Asmar is a former Labor mayor with the troubled Darebin council in Melbourne’s northwest. As a novice leader of a small to middle-sized union branch, her salary has raised eyebrows inside the HSU, especially after pay packet excesses of Williamson and Jackson.

Asmar boosted her salary to $182,000 in the 2014 financial year. In 2015 it fell slightly to $177,000. In 2016, it fell again to $158,000 as part of cuts forced on the branch but also reflecting some embarrassment at the size of her remuneration.

On $182,000, Asmar was the highest paid union official in Australia. Even now, she is paid close to the salaries of Dave Oliver and Ged Kearney who have responsibility at the ACTU for all unions.

Asmar’s perceived mastery of the industrial landscape and how the modern world came to be has prompted some mirth among her colleagues. At a 2013 national council meeting in Sydney, they recall Asmar referring to “World War Eleven” — apparently mistaking Roman numerals for the higher number.

In all seriousness, what her colleagues do find astounding is the remarkable “cashing out” of a $25,975 paid maternity leave entitlement that Asmar secured for herself in the 2015 financial year. It was shortly after the birth of Asmar’s second child. She opted for a payment on top of her salary, and did not take leave. She also cashed out $24,035 of annual leave in the same year. Paid maternity leave in the HSU branch No1 is tied to a 12 weeks’ entitlement in the Victorian public health system.

World experts on gender and employment such as Professor Marian Baird from Sydney University say “cashing out” maternity leave is unheard of, and defeats the purpose of the entitlement as leave. Union officials are disturbed at any watering down of this hard-fought condition for working women. They also do not condone cashing out of annual leave.

There is more that is murky about Asmar. During royal commission evidence in 2014, Asmar claimed she did not know about her election campaign funding because she left it to her husband, David, a former staffer of recently-departed senator Stephen Conroy.

David Asmar has attracted much unfavourable publicity. He was accused of links to an ALP branch stacking “scam” last year involving the use of anonymous gift cards to buy 1000 party memberships. The scam was allegedly run in part out of the HSU No1 branch.

David Asmar also scored attention during the unions royal commission. He flew to Lebanon shortly before he was due to give evidence, and then said he was too ill to fly back. He later did return. At 2.40am on July 2 this year — election day — David Asmar was arrested by Victorian police at St Kilda in Michael Danby’s electorate after allegedly being caught vandalising Greens and Liberal campaign posters. While none is believed to have ended up with charges, the others arrested with Asmar come from the same group: Andrew Landeryou and two officials of the HSU No1 branch, Dean Sheriff and George Droutsas.

To those who argue Asmar is now fixed on the big picture, HSU colleagues point to her quest to get back a framed poster of JFK that Kathy Jackson bought with union money for $1800 when she controlled the HSU No3 branch. When police recently handed back the poster, it landed in the office of Craig McGregor, the head of Jackson’s old branch. McGregor had hoped to sell the poster and channel the funds into general revenue.

But Asmar has hired a barrister, Remy van de Wiel QC, to recover the poster so it can hang in her office as it briefly did. Following the warped logic, a Melbourne QC stands to receive more than $4000 a day in union funds to retrieve an $1800 poster.