Peace with Sam Dastyari ‘worth $270,000’

ALP senator Sam Dastyari involved in allowing $270,000 in union funds to be paid to a former state MP to ‘bring peace’.

Former NSW secretary of the National Union of Workers Derrick Belan leaves after giving evidence during a closed hearing of the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption in Sydney, Thursday, Nov. 5, 2015. The Commission is probing suspicious spending, possible embezzlement and other activities at the NUW, with its former NSW secretary Derrick Belan being summoned from a psychiatric hospital to give evidence. (AAP Image/Dean Lewins) NO ARCHIVING

Labor senator Sam Dastyari was involved in allowing more than $270,000 in union funds to be paid to a former state MP to “bring peace” between the discredited National Union of Workers NSW branch and the ALP, the trade union royal commission was told ­yesterday.

Former NSW Labor MP Paul Gibson revealed Senator Dastyari’s role while explaining why he had been paid $271,566 by the NUW from 2012 to last year.

Mr Gibson, a long-time friend of the father of former NUW state secretary Derrick Belan, said the NSW ALP and the union had been estranged for 25 years “and my job was to make sure that both union and ALP worked together”.

He said the payments were under a verbal arrangement with Mr Belan that was “probably backed” by Senator Dastyari to “bring together” the parties, and was “very successful”.

“These two parties were at loggerheads,” he said. “There was a lot of problems on the line, but when I say that I think that we achieved what we set out to do: in Sam Dastyari’s maiden speech when he went in the Senate, one of the people he thanked was ­Derrick Belan and that wouldn’t have happened three or four years prior.”

His comments raise further questions about the misuse of union funds and came after records released by the commission reveal that Mr Belan’s credit card paid for thousands of dollars in spending on dating websites Match.com and Cupid, were used at a tattoo parlour and an indoor skydiving centre, and to pay off a $1000 loan at a pawnbroker over a few months last year.

Mr Belan, who resigned as the union’s NSW state secretary last month, was summonsed from a psychiatric hospital to ­attend the commission yesterday to face claims that he used union credit cards for personal use.

However, he was excused on medical grounds and ordered to reappear on Tuesday.

Mr Gibson, who was a NSW MP from 1998 to 2011, told the commission he was uniquely placed to take on his peace-­broking role.

“I had 100 per cent total confidence in me, through Derrick, through the union, and 100 per cent confidence from the general secretary of the Labor Party through Sam Dastyari, and I don’t think you would find anybody else on this earth that had, was in the same position,’’ he said.

“I agreed to bring peace between the union and … the Labor Party, and I was offered, given the opportunity to do something that would bring these two bodies together, and in the big picture of the labour movement it was terribly important that that happened.

“One of the hardest things was to get the National Union of Workers and through Derrick and Sam Dastyari, the general secretary of the ALP, to start talking to each other. It was a very successful venture.”

Asked by counsel assisting the commission “whose idea was it to enter into this consultancy?”, Mr Gibson replied: “It was probably Derrick’s and I think it was probably backed up by Sam.”

Mr Gibson conceded that he was paid beyond the point when “harmony was reached in my mind”, probably in late 2013.

Senator Dastyari last night told The Australian he had no knowledge of the payments from Mr Belan to Mr Gibson, but confirmed there was a mission to foster peace between the party and the union.

“Paul, as far as I was concerned, was managing the political relationship with the union,” Senator Dastyari said.

Mr Belan’s father Frank was his predecessor as state NSW secretary of the NUW.

The union’s national office expressed anger yesterday at the “distressing” revelations concerning Mr Belan, claiming the Belan family had “betrayed” officials, delegates and members in NSW.

“The national union is angry at allegations of criminal behaviour by some individuals from the Belan family,’’ the union’s national office said.

Union organiser Nick Belan, Derrick’s brother, testified that he never saw his credit card statements and there was no requirement for written authorisation for spending on the cards or to keep records expenses.

His own cards reflected spending of $933 at Ticket­master and $878 at the Apple Store in Singapore and a $1885 purchase at the Good Guys this year, which he could not recall.