Justice Heydon said when he was contacted by Mr Burton in March this year "I remember that I had agreed to give the Garfield Barwick address in August 2015".

"However, in March 2015, I overlooked the connection between the person or persons organising the event and the Liberal Party which had been stated in the email of 10 April 2014.

"I also overlooked the fact that my agreement to speak at that time had been conditional on the work of the commission being completed before that time. In the fact, the reporting date had been extended in October 2014 to 31 December 2015."

He said his personal assistant printed out a copy of the June 15 email from Mr Burton along with the attachments.

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"I glanced through the email noting the date, time and place of the dinner. I did not read the attachments having noted in the one-page email, 12 June, that I was to be the guest of the organisers," he said.

Justice Heydon said "my understanding at all times has been that the dinner was not to be a fundraiser".

Mr Heydon said unions would have to make written submissions by Thursday if they wished to pursue the application for him to disqualify himself. An application will be heard on Friday if the unions go ahead.


The ACTU will make a decision by Wednesday about whether to pursue the application.

In Parliament, Labor stepped up its push for the removal of Justice Heydon as Prime Minister Tony Abbott conceded that Justice Heydon's statement made it plain the Sir Garfield Barwick address was "a Liberal party event".

Rhodes connection

But Mr Abbott continued to reject assertions it was a party fundraiser.

"It was not a fundraiser at all; it was a Liberal Party event organised by one of the lawyer branches of the Liberal Party NSW division," Mr Abbott said. "It's never been disputed that this was a Liberal Party event."

He accused Labor of trying to smear Justice Heydon to distract from the findings of the commission.

Mr Abbott sidestepped earlier in the day when asked if he recalled Justice Heydon being on the panel that awarded a young Mr Abbott his scholarship to Oxford University.

Justice Heydon was part of the seven-member Rhodes Trust selection committee in NSW that in 1980 handed the prestigious Rhodes scholarship to Mr Abbott, then a 23-year-old student politician at Sydney University.


Mr Abbott said he could not recall.

Opposition manager of business Tony Burke suggested that whether it was a fundraiser or not, what mattered was that Justice Heydon agreed knowingly to speak at a Liberal Party event at the same time he was running the royal commission.

"Dyson Heydon, AC, QC, has confirmed that he accepted an invitation to speak at a fundraiser knowing full well it was organised by one of the lawyer branches of the Liberal Party of the NSW division," Mr Burke put to Mr Abbott.

"Doesn't this make it clear that the royal commissioner has been politicised from the start and the PM should withdraw Mr Heydon's commission?"

In the Senate, Attorney-General George Brandis said he only became aware on Thursday last week that Justice Heydon was giving the speech, but said his office had known much earlier when he was sent an invitation to attend.

"My office had become aware some months earlier and apologised on my behalf because I had already, at the time that my office received the date-claimer notice, accepted another event, which was in the diary," Senator Brandis said.