Counsel assisting Jeremy Stoljar quizzed Mr Shorten about money donated to the Australian Workers Union that was spent on his 2007 election campaign. Opposition Leader Bill Shorten arrives at royal commission on Wednesday. Credit:Kate Geraghty Mr Shorten said the AWU, which he led as state secretary from July 1998 and as national leader from July 2001, was happy to support him in his election campaign against the Liberal government. He said the labour hire company Unibilt had donated money through the AWU that was used to hire his campaign director Lance Wilson in February 2007. Asked when the donation was declared to the AEC, Mr Shorten said: "Oh, last week or the beginning of this week."

Pressed to be more precise, he said: "Within the last 144 hours or last Friday or Monday or Tuesday." Mr Stoljar asked Mr Shorten why "there has been a failure to disclose the fact that you received the services of Lance Wilson from the period of February through to November 2007 - correct?" But Mr Shorten replied that was not the case because "there is another set of declarations, which you may or may not be aware of". Candidate returns were frequently filed as "nil return" by both sides of politics, Mr Shorten said, "I think you will find - and I will come to it if you bear with me, even Mr Abbott for the last three elections or for a number of periods of elections has filed a nil return. That doesn't mean he or I aren't raising money or getting donation". "So the Labor Party says, you do these nil returns, then what it does is it requires - and I think it is sensible - that all matters of fund raising go through the Labor Party centrally.

"But I have discovered in very recent times that there was an incomplete form sent to the ALP head office and that is - I take ultimate responsibility for that." Shorten aware of incomplete form for "maybe months" During cross examination after lunch, Mr Shorten said he became aware of the failure to disclose the funding source for Mr Wilson's employment when he was preparing for his appearance at the royal commission - and knew for "maybe months". "In preparation for the royal commission more generally, I wanted to make sure that everything that should be done and everything was checked was, and this came to my attention," Mr Shorten said. "I sought legal advice to make sure that when we did it, we did it properly.

"It is not unknown in the history of electoral disclosures by political parties for candidates and members of parliament to update their disclosures as they realise information comes to light or hasn't been completed properly." When Mr Stoljar asked him whether he was waiting to see if the issue would emerge in the royal commission before making the disclosure to the ALP, Mr Shorten said: "Not at all." Mr Shorten also rejected suggestions that AWU members could not have known about the donation because the records were not accurate. He said the committee of management would have discussed such issues. Mr Shorten dismissed documents which described Mr Wilson as working for the AWU as neither "truthful or accurate". The company knew, Mr Shorten said, "they were paying for someone to work on my campaign and the union knew someone was being paid to work on my campaign".

When asked by Mr Stoljar if he had obtained the authority or approval from AWU members to enter into the arrangement that saw Mr Wilson work for him, Mr Shorten said "the secretary of the union has the authority to commit resources to political campaigning". Earlier Mr Stoljar asked Mr Shorten if he was aware that when he signed the election return he agreed that giving misleading information was a serious offence. Mr Shorten confirmed that Mr Wilson was employed as a campaign director from February to November in 2007. But his job was described as a "research officer" for Unibilt, which funded the position. "You agree with me that he was not in truth a research officer with Unibilt, but you say you don't know how that came to be in that job contract, is that fair?" Mr Stoljar said. Mr Shorten said he did not know why the contract described the job position incorrectly. "He was working on my campaign," Mr Shorten said.

"Do you say you have no explanation that you can offer as to how this contract came to describe him as such?," Mr Stoljar asked. "I cannot explain why that particular title is used. He was a campaign resource and campaign director for me," Mr Shorten replied. Mr Stoljar questioned Mr Shorten about the fact that Unibilt made the donation at the same time it was negotiating an enterprise agreement with the AWU. Mr Shorten said he was not involved in negotiations of Victorian branch EBAs "full stop". Asked if Unibilt boss Ted Lockyer expected favours in return, Mr Shorten replied: "No, I don't know, not to my knowledge at all."

"It is important for a labour hire company to have the support of the union correct?," Mr Stoljar continued. "It can be, yes," Mr Shorten said. Mr Shorten said he was no longer Victorian secretary of the union when the employment agreement was ratified. Shorten denies using position to 'gain advantage' Mr Shorten became heated when Mr Stoljar put it to him that he had used his position as AWU national secretary "to gain an advantage to yourself" by gaining a full-time campaign director at an employer's expense.

"Absolutely not," Mr Shorten said. "That assumes that whenever there is a donation in our electoral system by anyone that all other relationships and transactions must immediately be cast into doubt. That is not right and that is not how I operated at the union." Mr Wilson's salary was $52,000 per year of which Unibilt contributed $40,000. "The AWU was happy to support me in my election and they were campaigning against the then Liberal government. I can also say to you that Unibilt made a donation of a resource of a person directly and then through the AWU to me," Mr Shorten said. Shorten quizzed on pay and conditions at Cleanevent

Mr Shorten was asked about an almost four-fold increase in Victorian AWU membership at Cleanevent over the years 1999 to 2014. On the questions around Cleanevent employees, Mr Shorten said they would have been enrolled in the "same way in which we did it everywhere else and that policy was that we would seek employers to provide membership forms when people started to work". "I am definitely sure that it wasn't a 'closed shop', 'closed shop' is just industrial relations lingo for everyone had to be in the union," he said. Mr Shorten's successor as Victorian secretary of the AWU Cesar Melhem was forced to stand down as the Andrews government upper house whip as a result of evidence about Cleanevent at the royal commission. In particular Mr Melhem was damaged by the detail of a deal whereby Cleanevent gave his union up to $25,000 a year after the union traded off higher wages and casuals' penalty rates and saved the company about $2 million in labour costs.

But Mr Shorten said he had no knowledge of a so-called 'side-deal', struck in 2010, that saw the company pay up to $25,000 annually to the union and that he had only become aware of it "in very recent times". Last year the commission heard how Mr Melhem in 2009 paid Unibilt $5000 out of his controversial slush fund Industry2020. Mr Melhem used the employer and union bank-rolled fund to finance his own political career and the activities of his and Mr Shorten's sub-faction within Victoria's Labor Right. Notable among such outlays were support for elections for the disgraced Health Services Union, and for Labor branch stacking. Mr Shorten was an active supporter of Industry2020 including as a drawcard to two fund-raising events. No donations from Unibilt appear on the AEC donations register

News of employer and union contributions for Mr Shorten's tilt at the safe seat of Maribyrnong follow Fairfax revelations last month that the AWU also tipped $25,000 into the campaign while Mr Shorten was the union's national secretary. The elaborate campaign was dubbed by Labor insiders the "black hole of Maribyrnong" because of the amount of money and resources it absorbed. A late 2009 filing by the AWU national office records a $25,000 payment to ALP-Maribyrnong. Similar donations were also made to campaigns for the seats of Petrie and Stirling. Labor and union sources have also told Fairfax Media that AWU staff worked on Mr Shorten's campaign Fair Work Commission records show Mr Shorten resigned as AWU national secretary on November 26, 2007, two months after the donations, and the same month as the federal election. Ex-Labor MP and Health Services Union leader Craig Thomson is being sued by his former union for the alleged misuse of union resources on his successful 2007 campaign for the seat of Dobell. The use of union resources on parliamentary election campaigns is a grey legal area and the decision on the Thomson case may set a precedent on its lawfulness.

It remains unclear if the union passed any formal resolution about spending and other support for Maribyrnong or other seats. It is expected that the AWU will maintain its support for Mr Shorten, and thus he won't face any of the problems faced by Mr Thomson. Follow us on Twitter