Kathy Jackson deal to benefit lawyer BRAD NORINGTON THE AUSTRALIAN AUGUST 07, 2014 12:00AM WHISTLEBLOWER Kathy Jackson signed a secret deal with the now convicted fraudster Michael Williamson to put a Melbourne barrister and longstanding friend on a $150,000-a-year retainer as a legal adviser for eight years when their two union branches merged in 2010. The barrister, David Langmead, provided Ms Jackson with legal advice on a $250,000 payment to her then Health Services Union No 3 branch by the Peter MacCallum Cancer Institute after a confidential settlement over workers’ backpay in late 2003. Mr Langmead’s wife, Beth Jensen, another close friend of Ms Jackson’s, was also hired by Ms Jackson and Williamson as a consultant for a report that recommended that they and other top union officials be paid at the level of the senior executive service of the NSW public service. Ms Jackson’s relationship with Mr Langmead and his consultant wife is just part of an intricate web of friendships, commercial arrangements and factional plays that the union whistleblower endorsed when her HSU No3 branch in Victoria merged with Mr Williamson’s NSW branch in 2010 to become HSU East. The one-on-one Langmead agreement — as well as others reached by Ms Jackson and Williamson — show just how close they were before Ms Jackson turned on Williamson, now spending five years in jail after pleading guilty to large-scale fraud. There is no suggestion of wrongdoing by Mr Langmead. Ms Jackson has been praised as “heroic” by Tony Abbott and others for exposing Williamson and his former colleague, ex-Labor MP Craig Thomson, who has also been convicted of fraud. But the outspoken whistleblower now faces investigation by the royal commission into union corruption after a spate of allegations about her own financial dealings as a union official. The most controversial is the $250,000 “Peter Mac money” paid to Ms Jackson’s No3 branch after Mr Langmead served as legal adviser. Ms Jackson later used this confidential settlement — in which her branch was reimbursed for legal costs by the Melbourne-based cancer hospital following a dispute over $3.1 million in unpaid backpay — to justify shifting $284,500 of union members’ funds to a non-union Commonwealth Bank account. She controlled and spent these funds at her discretion. It is not clear whether underpaid hospital workers were informed about the $250,000 payment to Ms Jackson’s branch. Almost certainly none knew about the CBA account. Mr Langmead was retained as a barrister to provide advice by Ms Jackson between 1996 and 2010. Ms Jackson and Williamson secretly signed a deed on March 3, 2010 — two months before their unions merged to form HSU East — that put Mr Langmead on a $150,00-a-year retainer over eight years, paid monthly. The pair agreed he would charge $2700 a day, and $385 an hour. If the annual sum exceeded $150,000 then Mr Langmead was to bill the union for extra services. In another extraordinary move, Ms Jackson and Williamson agreed Mr Langmead would “continue” as their nominated director of the Health Super fund for eight years. He would collect thousands of dollars in fees attached to the position. Mr Langmead told The Australian yesterday he could not comment on his arrangement. It came to a swift end after Williamson was forced to step aside, and the merged union was untangled in 2012. The $150,000-a-year Langmead deal is remarkably similar to another lucrative “legally binding agreement” signed exclusively by Ms Jackson and Williamson, apparently without authority from other officials and kept confidential until it was later exposed. This deal gave Ms Jackson’s friend and union ally Rob Elliott a $150,000-a-year consultancy fee for 10 years. Ms Jackson and Williamson signed the deal on February 25, 2010 — three months ahead of their planned union merger and just a week before the Langmead deal — so that Mr Elliott could provide “strategic and policy advice” for 75 days a year at $2000 a day. Mr Elliott also scored a credit of long service leave, related to when he was previously the HSU’s national secretary. He was to be nominated for the HESTA super fund board, and to keep the fees. Ms Jensen, Mr Langmead’s wife, is being sued by the HSU in the NSW Supreme Court for alleged “professional negligence” after her recommendation that salaries for top officials be paid at the SES level. Ms Jackson’s salary was increased by 66 per cent from $173,000 to $287,000 after she became executive president in May 2010. Williamson’s salary, as general secretary, was boosted 25 per cent from $315,000 to $395,000. His salary later rose to $513,000 and he kept $200,000 in board fees. The HSU’s lawyers have seized on how the pay rises allowed cars and board fees on top, and did not package them like the SES.
Posted on: Thu, 07 Aug 2014 00:59:58 +0000
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