PLANET JACKSON: Power, Greed & Unions
BRAD NORINGTON
Melbourne University Press,
2016, 328 pages
Review by Phil Shannon
Michael Williamson, top dog of
the Health Services Union (HSU), used to joke that ‘nothing’s too good for the
workers - and their representatives’, as he brazenly defrauded the union to
generously enrich himself. $5 million
worth of generosity – that’s an awful lot of life’s little luxuries like fine
wine, retail goods, international holidays, mortgage repayments, home
renovations, Mercedes, speedboats and private school fees. Just one lavish, boozy lunch with his cronies
would burn through the annual dues ($600) of one of his low-paid union members
(hospital cleaners, orderlies, clerks, porters, etc.), writes journalist, Brad
Norington, in Planet Jackson.
Williamson’s thieving was accomplished
through misuse of his union credit card, through HSU business supply contracts at
grossly inflated prices from companies fully or partially owned by himself or
his family, and through nepotism and cronyism (he put eight family members on
the union payroll whilst his mistress received $155,000 a year for two days ‘work’
a week). For a creative flourish, Williamson
claimed reimbursement for false claims of muggings and burglaries of union
money. Obviously, the poor chap must
have been struggling to get by on his annual salary of $700,000.
Other senior HSU officials aped
his example. Craig Thomson, a protégé of
Williamson, trousered $250,000 to fund his successful 2007 Australian Labor
Party (ALP) federal election campaign, and embezzled $24,000 to spend on prostitutes,
sporting memorabilia and firewood, amongst the dishes on offer from the
smorgasbord of personal goodies supplied on other people’s dimes.
Kathy Jackson was a $1.4
billion financial embellisher in her mentor’s mould – her favourites from the corruption
buffet were fashion, medical services, hi-fi gear, groceries, liquor, camping
equipment, shopping trips to Hong Kong and divorce settlement payments to her
ex-husband. During the 2004 Boxing Day sales,
Jackson ran up $7,000 in a single day on her union credit cards.
Jackson was the most cynical
of the three, blowing the whistle on Williamson but only in an internal power
struggle - so even that act of honesty was self-serving. Noble whistle-blower was the “perfect cover”
for her own corruption, says Norington.
The HSU thieves were all addicted
to greed. Even when Thomson faced ignominious
defeat in the 2013 elections, he decided to stand again as an independent - just
so he could milk the taxpayer by claiming a ‘resettlement allowance’ of $97,000
for defeated incumbents. Jackson, when publicly disgraced, tried to
mine a new income seam by getting her hooks into a retired, dementia-suffering
QC for a share of his $30 million estate, whilst having herself appointed as
executor which gave her access to his bank accounts.
Norington examines in minute
detail every sordid nut and filthy bolt of the HSU leaders’ corruption but only
occasionally lifts his eyes to examine a greater corruption than that of a few
light-fingered union officials, namely the industrially and politically
corrupting intersection of the ALP and its affiliated unions.
Williamson, Thomson and
Jackson bartered their union bloc votes for factional influence and potential plush
parliamentary careers in the ALP whilst Labor politicians needed their
factional union allies, even the crooked ones.
Prime Ministers Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, opportunistically
motivated by retaining office, publicly covered for Thomson, whilst the party
paid his enormous legal bills to keep him from going bankrupt, losing his seat
and bringing down the minority Gillard government.
The HSU Three, even whilst
they were shamelessly diddling their union members, saw the ALP, the
self-proclaimed ‘party for the workers’, as a suitable political home for
themselves. That tells us something,
something unwholesome, about where the ALP’s loyalties really lie – with the
labour elite, at the expense of the workers they claim to represent.
No comments:
Post a Comment