Union royal commission: Melhem blames staffer for ‘selling out workers’

Cesar Melhem’s lawyers argue John-Paul Blandthorn drove negotiations for a deal to pay cleaners below-award rates.

Victorian MP Cesar Melhem says he ‘had no role in the negotiations ... until the documents were emailed to him’.

Victorian MP Cesar Melhem has placed the blame “for selling out workers” in the flawed Clean­event workplace deal on a former AWU organiser now working as an adviser to Premier Daniel Andrews.

Mr Melhem’s lawyers argued in legal submissions published by the trade union royal commission yesterday that John-Paul Blandthorn drove negotiations for a deal to pay cleaners below-award rates.

Contradicting his former boss, Mr Blandthorn’s submissions, also published yesterday, alleged Mr Melhem was behind a secret side-deal for Cleanevent to pay the AWU $25,000 a year, and provide a list of casual workers to add to the membership roll.

However, Mr Melhem’s submissions said: “If there was any ‘selling out’ of the workers it was not done by Mr Melhem but by Mr Blandthorn.” Mr Melhem “had no role in the negotiations ... until the documents were emailed to him by Mr Blandthorn. Mr Melhem was ­entitled to consider Mr Blandthorn as a senior organiser had negotiated in good faith and in the interest of the workers”.

Mr Blandthorn “expected to succeed Mr Melhem as the secretary of the Victorian branch but Mr Melhem ultimately supported another candidate”.

In his 48-page submission, Mr Melhem’s lawyers claimed there was “no evidence of dishonesty”, proof of corruption or “personal benefit” despite allegations of corruption alleged by Jeremy Stoljar SC and fellow counsel ­assisting the commission this month.

Mr Melhem rejected allegations he issued false invoices to the Thiess John Holland construction joint venture, engineering firm Downer EDI and ACI glassmakers, among others, to hide payments to the union.

Mr Blandthorn said he was “troubled” by the $25,000 secret payment, but Mr Melhem knew of the side-deal “and its intended purpose from the time of its ­inception by him”.

The inquiry heard the deal that left cleaners “worse off” was enshrined in a 2010 memorandum of understanding signed by then AWU national secretary Paul Howes. Mr Howes, who left the union last year and is a director at KPMG, testified in a written statement to hearings last month that he could not remember the MOU and it was not his “role to personally analyse” the “adeq­uacy” of the Cleanevent deal, leading counsel for the commission to conclude “Paul Howes should take responsibility for … failures in proper process”.

Mr Howes’s response, also published by the commission yesterday, alleged a “gross misused of power” by counsel assisting the commission, warning Commissioner Dyson Heydon that to ­accept counsel’s arguments could “lead the Commissioner into legal error” and possibly expose his final report to judicial review.

“These are matters upon which Mr Howes, if questioned, would have offered useful factual information.”