Unions royal commission: O’Connor doing brother’s bidding: Abetz

Labor’s workplace relations spokesman Brendan O’Connor accused of ‘running lines on behalf of his brother’.

Labor’s workplace relations spokesman Brendan O’Connor has described Dyson Heydon’s report on union governance and corruption as akin to something ‘written by a B-grade subeditor of a sleazy tabloid’.

Labor’s workplace relations spokesman Brendan O’Connor has been accused of “running lines on behalf of his brother”, the militant construction union leader ­Michael O’Connor, as he delivered scorching criticism of Royal Commissioner Dyson Heydon yesterday.

The shadow employment minister’s comments that Mr Heydon’s six-volume report on union governance and corruption was akin to something “written by a B-grade subeditor of a sleazy tabloid” prompted Employment Minister Michaelia Cash to declare Mr O’Connor was “perpetuating a deliberate and malicious smear campaign”.

Senator Cash said Mr O’Connor and his brother Michael, who was crucial in encouraging the Senate crossbench to vote down the Coalition’s bill to restore the powerful Australian Building and Construction Commission last year, “continue to downplay the significance of the problem the building and construction industry faces”.

“The Labor Party continues to deny what is now undeniable,” Senator Cash said. “Labor and their union bosses would better serve their members by taking the report seriously and stop defending the indefensible”.

Mr Heydon’s report referred dozens of Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union officials to criminal and civil agencies.

Defending the CFMEU’s millions in donations to the Labor Party on national radio yesterday, Mr O’Connor said: “We believe that anyone who’s broken the law should be dealt with appropriately, but to suggest because there may be individuals in an organisation (that) somehow that organisation is systemically corrupt, it does not hold water.”

Former employment minister Eric Abetz, who campaigned for an inquiry into union corruption with Tony Abbott ahead of the 2013 election, said Mr O’Connor’s attack on Mr Heydon, “a legal intellect and wordsmith beyond comparison, shows the climate of desperation in which the Labor Party now finds itself operating in”.

Senator Abetz said Mr O’Connor was presumably doing his brother’s bidding: “He’s running these lines on behalf of his brother, one assumes ... it’s the familial relationship that a lot of people pretend doesn’t exist,” Senator Abetz said. “This is a sign of a Labor Party desperate to retain its fiefdom of union … it’s got nothing to do with the national interest.

“They seek to besmirch a man who has devoted his life to the rule of law and the pursuit of law; he has an excellent reputation, he’s held in excellent high regard, it’s just a pity that at this stage of his career he should be subjected to such utterly personal vitriol in an attempt to overcome the evidence that ... the Labor Party is more interested in power, influence and money than the interest of workers.” The relationship between Labor and the unions was, Senator Abetz added, “too close to home”.

It’s understood the Coalition intends to continue campaigning on what some describe as the “unhealthy relationship” between the unions and the Australian Labor Party.

Mr O’Connor’s office declined to comment on Senator Cash and Senator Abetz’s comments.