Hang on to your hat: union corruption probe will be a wild ride

Grace Collier has a great column in The Australian today.   She talks about the union Royal Commission and the Victoria Police investigation into the AWU - then sets her sights on the fashionable types who found it easier to sniff the breeze than do their research.

It disappoints me how important people in powerful positions, in media and politics who have never actually worked in a union sniff disbelievingly at those who come forward to blow the whistle. Powerful, important people, whether left or right, associate with and assist other powerful, important people. When nobodies from outside the club come forward to cast aspersions on somebodies within the club, ranks close.

Grace is spot on with her observations about the realities of whistleblowing.   I am glad good people do it - but having experienced the consequences I don't think I'd recommend it to loved ones.

Publicly, union whistleblowers are derided, dismissed as crooked, having an axe to grind or downright mad. Privately, union whistleblowers find themselves sacked, threatened and even assaulted. To date, the lot of the union whistleblower has been to sit - discredited, isolated, in poverty - and watch those they dobbed on rise higher and higher into power and glory. Now comes the bitter revenge. The nobodies are coming to tear the somebodies down. Hang on to your hat, Australia, this is going to be a wild ride.

And Grace has spoken with Bob Kernohan who says Bill Shorten knew as much about the AWU Scandal as Bob did himself.

I spoke this week to a union whistleblower. Bob Kernohan was once a somebody; an AWU high-flier. In 1992, he met a young nobody, a Labor staffer just out of his law degree. The staffer expressed interest in unions and Kernohan gave him volunteer work. When the staffer expressed interest in a proper union job, Kernohan agreed to give him a go but arranged a back-up career for the lad first, just in case.

Kernohan got the union’s law firm, Maurice Blackburn, to take the staffer on as an articled clerk. After the articles were completed, Kernohan organised for the newly qualified lawyer a proper job at the union. That young lawyer was Bill Shorten. Kernohan refers to him as his “protege”.

Kernohan thinks his protege is the person with the most to lose out of the royal commission. He says Shorten knew about slush funds during his time in the AWU, knew of the famed AWU scandal, and they fell out over the cover-up.

Kernohan has been bashed by thugs and now keeps a low profile, but is still a witness in the current police investigation. He stands ready to be a witness in the royal commission.

In hindsight, considering how their positions have reversed, Kernohan regrets the start he gave Shorten, but points out with humour that at the time he was young and naive.