Brad Norington - Planet Jackson: Power, greed and unions

POWER, GREED

& UNIONS

BRAD NORINGTON

MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY PRESS

An imprint of Melbourne University Publishing Limited

1115 Argyle Place South, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia

www.mup.com.au

First published 2016

Text Brad Norington, 2016

Design and typography Melbourne University Publishing Limited, 2016

This book is copyright. Apart from any use permitted under the Copyright Act 1968 and subsequent amendments, no part may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means or process whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publishers.

Every attempt has been made to locate the copyright holders for material quoted in this book. Any person or organisation that may have been overlooked or misattributed may contact the publisher.

Cover design by Design by Committee

Typeset by Sonya Murphy, Typeskill

Printed in Australia by McPhersons Printing Group

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

Norington, Brad, 1959 author.

Planet Jackson: power, greed and unions/Brad Norington.

9780522870336 (paperback)

9780522870343 (ebook)

Includes index.

Health Services Union.

Labor unionsCorrupt practicesAustralia.

Misconduct in officeAustralia.

331.8811610994

AUTHORS NOTE

AFTER FOUR YEARS OF living and working in the United States, I returned to the Sydney newsroom of The Australian newspaper in mid-2013. In October that year, the boss of the Health Services Union, Michael Williamson, pleaded guilty to serious fraud after admitting to large-scale systematic thieving from the funds of the low-paid hospital workers who were his members. The Australians then editor-in-chief, Chris Mitchell, asked me to follow Williamsons money trail for a series of articles commissioned for the paper.

At first it seemed the story had been thoroughly sewn up during my absence. Williamson faced a long stretch in jail. His former union protg, Craig Thomson, now a disgraced ex-Labor MP, faced fraud charges and an uncertain future. But I did manage to take the story in a new direction, exposing much more in a scandal that merited public scrutiny.

It was a direction that ultimately led to the door of Kathy Jackson, the corruption whistleblower who exposed Williamson and later starred in royal commission proceedings called to investigate corruption in the HSU and other unions. There was a dark side to Jacksons role in the scandal.

What I witnessed first-hand is a morality tale of modern politics, laced with plenty of farce and tragedy, and revealing human nature at its best and worst. More broadly, the HSU saga stands as an important case study of existential problems besetting Australias union movement and the political party it spawned. I found it often a wild ride.

PARASITE

THE JUDGE TOOK HIS time detailing Michael Williamsons offences. All the while, Williamson sat expressionless in the dock of NSW District Court LG1 in Sydneys Downing Centre. The multi-level, block-long building on a busy corner of Liverpool Street was once called The Piazza and housed a city department store called Mark Foys. Still clearly visible from the street were the smart yellow-gold trimmings that lined the window ledges of the original 1909 Parisian faade. Visible too were the family companys logo and words in bold letteringSilks, Millinery, Laces and Glovesthat denoted this a one-time palace of fashion.

Long ago, Williamson would have wandered through Mark Foys when it employed full-time lift operators to press the buttons and direct customers to tempting luxuries, returning to the ground floor and exit via Australias first escalator. Now the building was completely refurbished inside, with judges chambers, courts, jury rooms, and cells in the basement. On this day, 28 March 2014, Williamson, the 60-year-old former Health Services Union leader, was there as a prisoner, awaiting sentence.

Williamson was spruced up for the occasion, wearing a black power suit and licorice black and white striped tie. But absent was the swagger and blokey bravado of years past. Williamson appeared a sad imitation of his former self. He was pale, his hair was whiter and he had lost weight. He sat with a slight stoop and his face seemed sunk into itself, almost collapsed. A saying used to describe someone with overweening confidenceMore front than Mark Foysno longer applied to this man.

Transported in a police van from Silverwater jail in Sydneys west, where hed stayed since the cancellation of his bail three weeks earlier, Williamson had then been escorted by guards from a cell in the bowels of the Downing Centre to the court upstairs. There was no obliging lift operator to point Williamson to menswear. After he entered through a side door behind the dock, his eyes remained firmly fixed on the judge who would determine his fate.

As Judge David Frearson spoke, the packed public gallery in this smallish court looked on, mostly silent. Seated sardine-like was a jumble of plain-clothed detectives, lawyers, journalists and, conspicuously, some Williamson foes keen to see justice done. Occasionally there was a whimpering sound from one of Williamsons daughters, Alexandra, upset at her fathers predicament. Loyal to the end, she was among those clinging to the ideal that there was a good man buried deep inside the soul of the criminal in the dock.

The sentiment of Williamsons few remaining supporters was expressed in a deeply personal statement that another of his five children, Elizabeth, had written for the court. It was a plea for leniency. Elizabeth said she had seen her father battle daily with guilt, shame, disappointment and anger. She had witnessed the toll of his conduct on both her parentsanxiety, depression, high blood pressure and countless other medical conditions.

I am acutely aware that somewhere in my dads employment at the Health Services Union he engaged in serious wrongdoings. This behaviour has torn our family down in a way which I never thought was possible I know that my fathers conduct was wreck less [sic], cowardly, arrogant and irresponsible, however this is totally inconsistent with the man that I know as my father.

Like his colleagues on the bench, Judge Frearson was accustomed to all sorts of riffraff: he faced a daily parade of criminal cases that ran the gamut of assault, domestic violence, incest, robbery, theft, fraud, drug dealing and insider trading. Todays riffraff was a white-collar criminal, a man convicted of big-scale fraud and hindering a police investigation.

Williamsons remorse was belated. The toll on his personal health was self-induced. Over more than a decade this man had greedily, systematically stolen from the union he led. He had lined his own pockets with money from the membership dues of hospital cleaners, orderlies and clerks who had trusted him to serve their interests by improving their wages and conditions.

Williamsons members included some of the lowest-paid workers in the country, their earnings barely enough to cover rent and family expenses. He exploited these people, using their collective contributions as a personal bank to indulge in a life of excess. He had fed hundreds of thousands of dollars into lavish lunches, fine wine, retail goods, entertainment, international holidays, mortgage payments, home renovations, a waterfront weekender on a double block, a Mercedes convertible, a speedboat, a jetski and private school fees for his five children.

How did Williamson afford such spending? His salary at the time he was charged by police exceeded $500,000 a year. It was effectively self-approved and topped up by a further $200,000 from a string of plum board positions. The salary total was wildly out of proportion to the $30,000 to $40,000 a year earned by the many low-paid workers who were his members. Williamson was the highest-paid union official in Australiaby far.