Michael Lawler sick leave stalls inquiry into Fair Work VP

An inquiry into Michael Lawler has been delayed after he checked himself into a mental health facility.

Fair Work vice-president Michael Lawler has resumed his sick leave and checked himself into a mental health facility.

A major inquiry into Fair Work vice-president Michael Lawler, who has taken fully paid sick leave for more than nine months since mid-2014, has been delayed after Mr Lawler resumed sick leave and checked himself into a mental health facility.

Mr Lawler, the partner of disgraced former Health Services Union boss Kathy Jackson, ­appears to have fallen victim to illnesses similar to those afflicting Ms Jackson as she faced Federal Court deadlines in recent years.

Employment Minister Michaelia Cash announced yesterday that she had agreed to a request from the inquiry head, former Federal Court judge Peter ­Heerey QC, to extend the timetable for delivering his report until February 29 next year. This pushes out the original year-end deadline by two months.

“Mr Heerey has received a ­request from a party involved in the investigation for additional time to respond to questions, due to a medical condition,” Senator Cash said.

After a six-month investigation by The Australian revealed Mr Lawler had taken sick leave since May last year while involving himself in Ms Jackson’s ­defence before the Federal Court and also the trade union royal commission, Senator Cash announced an independent inquiry into his behaviour on October 11. On October 19, Senator Cash ­announced the inquiry would be conducted by Mr Heerey.

A week later, on October 26, Mr Lawler resumed sick leave and subsequently self-admitted himself to a psychiatric facility. His only published decision since then is a correction to the name of a company mentioned in an ­earlier decision.

The terms of reference for the Heerey inquiry include examining a major complaint against Mr Lawler, revealed in this newspaper, in which the vice-president was allegedly abusive and displayed a series of conflicts of interest during a hearing. The Heerey inquiry has the power to recommend that Mr Lawler be removed from his $435,000-a-year position by a vote of both houses of parliament — the only process for removing him.

Mr Lawler has previously ­admitted himself to hospital and warned his superiors at Fair Work that any attempt to speak to him while he was ill would be construed as harassment.

Fair Work president Iain Ross told a Senate estimates hearing on October 22 this year that he wrote to Mr Lawler on July 7 last year warning him against representing Ms Jackson in court after Mr Lawler appeared on her behalf in the Federal Court.

Three weeks later Ms Jackson told lawyers for the union royal commission Mr Lawler was in hospital. Four days later he was out of hospital and phoning royal commission lawyers to discuss Ms Jackson’s case. He said they were both exhausted and getting little sleep after working constantly on her legal matters. According to a file note prepared by royal commission lawyers, Mr Lawler said he had been “spoken to by his ­superiors” regarding his role in Ms Jackson’s case.

Justice Ross told Senate estimates he had also written to Mr Lawler in June this year to warn him that his continued public involvement in Ms Jackson’s case was damaging Fair Work’s reputation. Justice Ross told Senate ­estimates: “The real issue of controversy is: what was vice-president Lawler doing while he was on approved sick leave from the commission ... the vice-president did not seek, and I did not ­approve, leave for the purpose of assisting his partner in her legal proceedings.”

Justice Ross said Mr Lawler warned him last year that it would constitute harassment if anyone contacted him while he was on sick leave. “I then received a telephone call from the vice-president in which he made his position very clear. He indicated that the actions I had taken constituted harassment of him,” Justice Ross said. “He also made it clear that any contact by me or, indeed, by the commission generally, while he was on sick leave, exacerbated his illness and he asked that I cease any such contact. To underscore the seriousness of the issue, the vice-president informed me that my actions had led him to voluntarily admit himself to a psychiatric institution the previous weekend.”

Mr Lawler, in an affidavit this year, referred to his brief hospital stay last year in a mental facility and said that pressure from his colleagues meant he required ­extensive sick leave. “My productive capacity was severely limited in this period (the second half of 2014),” he said.

Mr Lawler also spent considerable time on sick leave establishing banking arrangements and other preparations to legally transfer Ms Jackson’s property at Wombarra, south of Sydney, to his own name — ahead of Ms Jackson’s Federal Court hearing.

Ms Jackson was regularly ill last year. Two days after she hosted a garden party in Wombarra with Mr Lawler on October 12, 2014, Ms Jackson’s solicitor told the Federal Court she was not only too ill to provide him with any rational instruction but she was in a mental facility after giving evidence to the royal commission. He asked that her trial on allegations of stealing $1.4 million from the HSU be abandoned.

The judge adjourned the case for three weeks. On November 5, Ms Jackson’s lawyer, seeking to delay the trial, again told the court that she was in a mental facility as a voluntary patient.

Separately, Ms Jackson had told the royal commission that she suffered a breakdown in 2011 after exposing corruption in the HSU. Ms Jackson had been so overwhelmed at that time that she was checked into hospital by Mr Lawler, who feared for her health after weeks of HSU-related stress.

That breakdown followed her allegedly finding a shovel on her doorstep — less than two weeks after returning from a month-long holiday in New York, London and Hong Kong.