Leader of the Opposition Bill Shorten during House of Representatives question time at Parliament House. Photo / Stefan Postle
Leader of the Opposition Bill Shorten during House of Representatives question time at Parliament House. Photo / Stefan Postle
Bill Shorten had another bruising day at the royal commission into trade union corruption, exacerbated by calls for his resignation by a former Labor Party national secretary.
Bob Hogg's comments followed Shorten's admission on Wednesday that he failed to disclose a A$40,000 ($44,700) donation to his 2007 parliamentary campaign froma company with which his union was negotiating a workplace agreement - until Monday this week.
The resignation call was dismissed by Shorten allies, who noted that Hogg was placed on a good behaviour bond in 1991 for failing to disclose political donations totalling almost A$143,000. However, it reflected mounting concerns within the party about the damage being done to Shorten's image, with the royal commissioner, former High Court Judge Dyson Heydon, yesterday voicing concern about the Opposition Leader's "credibility as a witness".
During his second day of testimony, Shorten - a former Victorian and national leader of the powerful Australian Workers Union - was questioned about a workplace deal struck with a major construction company, Thiess John Holland, which was building Melbourne's A$2.5 billion East Link tollway. Following the deal in 2005 - which cut workers' conditions, saving the company up to A$100 million - Thiess paid the AWU A$300,000. The union billed it for health and safety training and staff dinner dances - invoices which Jeremy Stoljar, SC, assisting the commission, suggested were "bogus". Shorten replied: "I would never be party to issuing bogus invoices ..."
Heydon's interjection followed a series of long and convoluted responses by Shorten to questions from Stoljar. The commissioner said although he understood Shorten wished to rebut recent media criticism of his trade union leadership record, "what am I concerned about more is your credibility as a witness".
On Facebook Hogg accused Shorten of not understanding the idea of conflict of interest, saying his failure to disclose the donation from a labour hire firm, Unibilt, was either "a real lapse of memory, sloppy book-keeping or a hope no one would notice ... Take your pick". Hogg wrote: "Bill, do something for the ALP. It's simple. Just go".
Political pundits, while agreeing that no "smoking gun of corruption" has emerged from Shorten's testimony, believe it can only have harmed his political fortunes. Malcolm Farr, News Corp's online national political editor, wrote of the jarring "spectacle of a private company paying for a trade union leader's campaign for Parliament ... like dogs playing with cats". Michael Gordon, political editor of the Age, described the failure to disclose the donation as "a bad look". And the Daily Telegraph's political editor Simon Benson wrote that Shorten's testimony "will reinforce perceptions that he is evasive, self-serving and can't be trusted".
