Michael Lawler and Kathy Jackson: Protests of innocence

Michael Lawler and Kathy Jackson’s bizarre attempt to restore their reputations.

Stills provided by the ABC showing Kathy Jackson and Michael Lawler as they appear in a Four Corners show to be aired on Monday 19th October 2015. Some images show Four Corners reporter Caro Meldrum-Hanna.

Michael Lawler is seen looking earnestly into the lens of a camera he used last year to record a “video diary” he hopes can clear his name and restore the reputation of his disgraced partner, Kathy Jackson.

At one point of this self-made, rambling five-hour monologue, parts of it aired by the ABC’s Four Corners program on Monday night, Lawler says, eyebrows arched: “I am going to make some allegations that are properly described as sensational.”

Nothing from what Four Corners screened of Lawler’s personal movie could be described as sensational — or new.

Certainly the Fair Work Commission vice-president did allege, as relayed by reporter Caro Meldrum-Hanna, that he and Jackson had been the victims of “a sophisticated, complex conspiracy against them” that began in 2012.

Lawler claims individuals high up in the ALP “machine” have run a smear campaign to destroy Jackson and himself as a payback for exposing the corruption of now jailed Health Services Union leader Michael Williamson.

It would be sensational if such a high-level conspiracy that presumably also involved independent authorities such as courts and police were proved, but all these allegations have surfaced before. Lawler’s re-aired comments did not offer any substance to back a supposed complex conspiracy; Four Corners did not show Lawler naming anyone about anything specific.

The value of Monday’s extraordinary piece of well-produced television by Meldrum-Hanna and the Four Corners team was not in advancing a story, or stories, first reported and detailed in numerous articles by The Australian dating back to last year.

Its strength was the bird’s-eye view for outsiders into the wild, even weird, world inhabited by Jackson and Lawler.

On display along with an emotional rollercoaster and some rough expletives was the couple’s self-righteousness. They offered contradictory defences about their behaviour as they find their lives under siege on multiple fronts.

The immediate reaction of many who viewed this program has been to ask why the couple would open up to Four Corners, and how they could possibly think such exposure on national television would help their cause.

Jackson, as the program’s title suggests, is “inside the eye of a storm”. She was feted by Tony Abbott and others in 2011 as “a brave, decent woman”, “a revolutionary” and “a lion of the union movement” for having the courage to blow the whistle on the excesses of her HSU colleague Williamson.

She now battles allegations that her fraud over the period she worked with Williamson was just as bad or worse, and that she spoke out to divert attention from her own wrongdoing.

Jackson is the subject of a major police investigation. Police raided the home she shares with Lawler earlier this month, seizing computer files and artwork to aid their advanced inquiries.

The Federal Court has already ordered Jackson to repay $1.4 million in HSU funds she misappropriated and spent between 2004 and 2013 on personal luxuries, overseas holidays and even part of a divorce settlement. Lawyers for the royal commission into union corruption, who originally gave Jackson the soft-glove treatment as an anti-corruption witness but have since changed their minds after a string of reports in The Australian, earlier this month backed the court’s position.

Lawler, meanwhile, is in terrible trouble too. He faces a government inquiry into his alleged misconduct and misuse of nine months’ sick leave from his $435,000 position — following details that have emerged from exclusive reports in The Australian.

Lawler used much of his time in which he claimed to be unfit for work, backed by medical certificates, moonlighting for Jackson. He spent many, many hours helping to prepare her legal documents for the Federal Court and the royal commission. The outcome of adverse findings could be Lawler’s removal by a vote of parliament.

GALLERY: Lawler-Jackson — the key players

Police are also interested in Lawler: they want to know if he has knowingly or otherwise benefited from funds that originated with Jackson and the HSU.

Did HSU money pay for Lawler to travel overseas with Jackson on some of their regular holiday jaunts together? Did HSU money channelled into Jackson’s former home in Melbourne end up flowing to Lawler when she used the profits from the sale of the house for a more recent mortgage on the home now shared by the couple at Wombarra, south of Sydney? The Australian has reported exclusively on much of the money flow involved.

Then there is the perplexing issue of Lawler and Jackson’s deep involvement in the life of a prominent retired Sydney barrister with advanced dementia, David Rofe QC, as first reported by this newspaper in February, and unravelled since.

Lawler claimed on Four Corners that Rofe was his friend and mentor, and that he loved him and had promised to help him. But he has never fully explained why, after years of little contact with Rofe since their days as Sydney barristers working on the same floor, he suddenly popped up in late 2012 offering to help the ageing barrister with his $30m fortune. He then used a power of attorney in a “selfless act” to buy a $1.35m house, using the barrister’s money, that is next door to the Jackson-Lawler residence. Old Rofe friends and family seemed to get frozen out.

During this period, as Rofe’s condition worsened, Jackson assumed a very prominent place in the elderly man’s life.

Still, it is puzzling, to say the least: how did Jackson, who met Rofe only in mid-2012 when he represented her in a disastrous brief court hearing and quickly dropped out, pop up in Rofe’s will last year as the potential beneficiary of a $3m inheritance when he dies? What is the status of many rewritten wills involving Jackson and Lawler, considering Rofe has dementia?

The Four Corners program could be seen as a test of allegations that Jackson and Lawler have revelled in a life of excess and entitlement. Much of it lurched from Shakespearean tragicomedy to bawdy soap opera.

For Lawler and Jackson, however, it does seem to have served a purpose. Successful or not, Lawler appears to have perceived the hours of Four Corners interviews as a platform for him to attempt to rebut much of the evidence and allega­tions published by The Australian.

His sick leave defence is the most obvious. The Australian reported in February and March this year Lawler’s inclination to make audio and video recordings of conversations with people. The revelation on Four Corners that he made a covert phone recording of his own boss, judge Iain Ross, telling him he should take all the leave he needed to get well, and that no cap applied to his sick leave, was extraordinary.

It was possibly an illegal recording by Lawler, and certainly odd for someone of his proclaimed semi-judicial status. But for Lawler it contributes a supposed key defence: he claims he has proof that his sick leave was legitimate, and approved by Ross. Alternately, Lawler claims it was right for him to take time off to help Jackson: he cannot argue both.

Due to a legislative oversight in Canberra, Lawler’s sick-leave provisions are unlimited time-wise. What Ross did not know was that Lawler was performing work for Jackson during his sick leave, and was also deeply immersed in helping Rofe with his finances. Ross probably didn’t envisage that Lawler would take nine months off, and sought to clarify the situation in writing later.

Lawler was happy to give Four Corners extensive home-video footage of him and Jackson holidaying at luxury destinations across Europe and North America. This looks a pre-emptive move as various efforts are made to match up when Lawler took leave, and when Jackson used union money to fund expensive personal trips for the couple.

Lawler admitted on Four Corners that he had made overseas trips with Jackson using HSU money to fund “airfares and a small amount of accommodation”. But he claimed he did not know at the time that union money was being used.

Lawler even seemed to allow himself an escape route if things deteriorate further for Jackson. At the same time as pledging his love and bemoaning the “evil” perpetrated upon his beloved, he admitted several transactions involving Jackson during her time as a senior HSU official were “prima facie crooked” and needed an explanation. He conceded in a moment of clarity that his partner may have committed criminal offences. “The consequence will be what they are,” he added.

What Lawler thought he could achieve by presenting Rofe, obviously suffering dementia, to Four Corners’ cameras is not clear. Footage of Lawler asking Rofe to read and assess legal documents is mystifying. The volunteered phone taping of Rofe telling Law­ler he did not want him to buy a $1.35m property using his money — consistent with reports earlier this year in this newspaper — did not seem helpful to the Lawler-Jackson cause. This house, by the way, is the same one the couple have used as a temporary residence since a fire damaged theirs in February. Rofe has never lived in it. Lawler is heard telling Rofe he would look a “complete f..king idiot” if he kept saying he had not agreed to the purchase.

The oddest comment from Lawler during extensive Four Corners interviews was that he would be characterised as a scumbag, fraudster and at the very best somebody bewitched by an evil harridan, adding, “that I’m c...struck and have been utterly taken in by somebody who is a serious crook”.

An outside observer with some knowledge of Lawler’s background may question the choice of expletive at least. Lawler comes from a very conservative Catholic family; his father was a high-ranking public servant and ambassador with past connections to Bob Santamaria’s National Civic Council and Abbott; his brother was head of the Australian Crime Commission until retiring. For the past decade since his appointment by Abbott, Lawler does appear to have been on a midlife crisis journey of discovery and excitement. It is currently not going well for him.

Jackson also used Four Corners as a platform. She tried to deflect the Federal Court’s adverse decision in August by saying the “Federal Court didn’t have my evidence”, and worked off its own evidence. “That’s not really fair Federal Court is it?”

What Jackson omitted to add, first, was that she declined to show up in court to provide a defence in the hearing. But judge Richard Tracey did work off her detailed evidence: his decision repeatedly cites her evidence from the detailed submissions provided by Jackson, and mostly written for her by Lawler.

Jackson also tries to justify what she calls “entitled” spending of $28,000 a year on herself, saying she was approved by her past HSU branch’s committee of management to spend this money — but a piece of paper confirming this in writing is missing.

Tracey rebuffed this claim as nonsense, making it clear Jackson could have no authority to spend large sums of union money on herself.

Even if she did have such authority, she continued to spend thousands of dollars of HSU branch funds channelled to a private Commonwealth Bank account for more than three years after the branch in question had been dissolved. All up, Jackson channelled $284,500 into this account. It had a balance of zero when she closed it in November 2013.

Lawler told Four Corners the real question was whether his love for Jackson had clouded his judgment. We will know soon enough.