Fair Work taking HSU officials to court

Updated

Sorry, this video has expired Video: Fair Work to pursue HSU contraventions (The Midday Report)

Fair Work Australia has announced it will take two serving and one former union official to the Federal Court over the alleged misuse of Health Services Union funds.

FWA's investigation into the embattled union had already found 181 contraventions of rules and legislation, and today general manager Bernadette O'Neill asked lawyers to begin legal proceedings.

She said the FWA investigation into the HSU revealed an organisation that abjectly failed to have adequate governance arrangements in place to protect union members' funds against misuse.

"Substantial funds were, in my view, spent inappropriately including on escort services, spousal travel, and excessive travel and hospitality expenditure," she said.

"I have decided that the public interest strongly favours acting wherever possible to ensure that organisations and their officers and employees are properly held to account for the expenditure of the union's funds."

She said the contraventions involved the HSU national office along with two current officials, a former auditor, and one former official.

Ms O'Neill said the majority of contraventions related to the former official, but she would not name the person for privacy reasons.

She said the report had been sent to the Senate's committee on education, employment and workplace relations.

Federal MP Craig Thomson was the union's national secretary before entering Parliament and has been accused of misusing union funds, but has always denied any wrongdoing.

"Any proceedings brought against me in respect of the findings in the report will be strenuously defended," Mr Thomson said in a statement today.

"This whole investigation has been nothing short of a joke.

"It is unprecedented that an investigative body has such little confidence in its report that it seeks parliamentary privilege as a condition of the report's release.

"The CDPP (Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions) has made it clear that there are no findings of a criminal nature in the report.

"The police have made it clear that there is nothing in the Fair Work Australia report that is of a criminal nature.

"I'm very glad the police have seen it, because that is what I have always called for – for police to be handed the Fair Work Australia report."

Fair Work sent the results of its three-year inquiry to the CDPP, which has now handed the document to the Victorian and New South Wales police.

However, Ms O'Neill said she was unable to provide a brief of prosecution to the CDPP.

Ms O'Neill found that 105 of 181 rule breaches are of "civil penalty provisions".

She said some of the rule breaches related to the failure to have internal policies governing the use of credit cards.

Ms O'Neill said she had issued a notice to the HSU requiring that it put governance arrangements in place within 30 days.

Brown angry

HSU acting national president Chris Brown said he was angry that Fair Work Australia did not intend to pursue any of the matters that might be of a criminal nature.

"Questions certainly need to be asked about either if the deficiencies are in the legislation or if the deficiencies are in the Fair Work process - we need to find out what that is about," he said.

"We were led to believe in the very beginning that Fair Work Australia would have the ability to refer these matters for criminal prosecution in the event that it warranted that."

He said he expected the Victorian Police to come forward if the report's release has the potential to prejudice any criminal prosecution.

"The Victorian Police, I understand whilst they've made no statement regarding it, I'm sure they will be looking at it very carefully to see the extent to which it complements their investigation or provides them with leads that they can follow," he said.

Shadow attorney-general George Brandis said the Fair Work report should be released immediately "as a matter of urgency".

He said he did not accept Ms O'Neill's assertion that she cannot provide a brief of evidence to the CDPP.

"There is no legal basis for this report not to be released now and any resistance by Julia Gillard or Bill Shorten to the release of this report can only be seen as a cover-up."

Topics: unions, corruption, alp, australia, nsw, vic

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