Yesterday James Glissan QC appeared at the Royal Commission to make oral submissions for the Transport Workers' Union.

Each of the bullet points below is a direct quote - I've tried to set out his major points using his own words - he said he wanted to talk about:

• the nature of the Commission itself..... both the flavour and the nature of the position of the Commission to date.

He submitted that the Commission is a conservative, political exercise pre-ordained to demonise unions:

• (The Royal Commission itself) might be described as an unhealthy conservative political polemic in relation to trade unions.

• there is no evidence in relation in relation to the union movement generally of any systemic corruption which would require legislative interference; and that there is no material properly analysed and the evidence properly considered which would indicate that there was a need for increased governance in relation to unions

• some instances of conduct that could be described as corrupt and certainly some conduct that could only be described as dishonest........common human experience indicates that there will always be found some dishonesty and some corruption from any such aggregation.

• in terms of corruption, there have been individual instances as I have advanced, but there is no evidence of any systemic corruption which would require a legislative interference. As I saw the Terms of Reference, they themselves contained within them some indicia of pre-determination
• The Terms of Reference were summarised by the Commission itself, and indeed the Commissioner sits under the Coat of Arms and next to it is the "Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption". That assumes, by its very title, a conclusion that the matters to be inquired into exist both as to deficiencies in governance and to the existence of corruption, not, as I have said, into whether corruption exists or governance issues exist, and the Terms of Reference, as they have been expressed, assume that systemic issue.
• There has been at present, however, a failure to consider the apparent probity of unions with regard to the general corporate community as to both the incidence and the degree of corrupt activity.
• there is a need to carefully distinguish between the philosophical disagreement with elements of the union movement and a systemic failure which requires legislative interference or changes to the governance arrangements......the process.....must be making evidence based findings divorced from philosophical constructs and then arriving at conclusions based upon the evidence that has been clearly established.

He thinks Senior Counsel Assisting is in on the conservative agenda:

• (on) Counsel Assisting's submissions, we would make the general proposition that those are submissions that are predominantly based on a philosophical rather than an evidence based analysis of the material before the Commission.

The TWU believes that the current criminal law and police processes are sufficient, there was never any need for this inquiry:

• The evidence has revealed that any union corruption is to be associated with individuals rather than with the movement itself, and that any corruption within unions has not been shown to be systemic, but, more importantly perhaps than either of those things, the evidence that has been before the Commission and has so far been the subject of submission and to a degree pronounced upon establishes that the laws both civil and criminal are adequate to combat corruption where it occurs.

• Without moving into the irrelevant, there is an appeal being conducted in Melbourne in relation to the corruption of a union official. There was an exhaustive analysis of the behaviour of a former Prime Minister in this union which was found not to be corrupt. Those are things where the adequacy of the present legal regime has been demonstrated, strongly demonstrated, and argues strongly against any need to increase the level of regulation that is to be imposed on what are, after all, very important political voluntary associations, however structured.

He doesn't want any recommendations this December, leave it till next year please:

• we strongly urge the Commission to make no recommendations at an interim level which suggests any significant changes or any increased regulation of the trade union movement in general.

• The principal thrust of our submissions to the Commission and to my learned friend today is to commend caution to the Commission in that interim report in terms of any findings and in terms of any recommendations that might be thought to be made. We would respectfully suggest

• that this is a time to defer rather than to make recommendations because the evidence is not yet complete.

If you are an office holder in the ACTU, or the Labor Party, you should be able to use your union slush fund more broadly than if you're just an office holder in one union:

• It is important that those who control, operate and are involved in the general union movement rather than simply particular unions are recognised as having an interest in the whole, because the whole function of the union movement, as we hope we have demonstrated in our submissions in writing, where we put the early history of unions, their development through to the present time, has been the use of combination to place workers in a position where they can hope to compete and hope to achieve equality with those who employ them, where they can hope to establish, hope to create, and hope to maintain decent standards of safety of employment, of time in employment, and of wages.

And that means you should be able to use your slush fund to get a mate into a top job in another union, just like this:

• Where the funds have been used more generally, they have been used for the benefit of the union movement as a whole, not for the advancement of an individual's personal interest. The clearest example of that is the involvement of McLean in the transformation from corrupt to one mightalmost say exemplary of the Health Services Union and its involvement in the removal of Michael Williamson and the advancement of Gerard Hayes.

Finally, there's no point trying to improve the TWU, it already has exemplary governance.   Thanks for your suggestions about ways to make it better, but Mr Glissan can't see how you could improve it, sounds like he's saying it's perfect!

• Transport Workers Union has over many years striven to improve its governance, to improve its compliance, to improve its record keeping and that at this point it is difficult to discern current defects in its governance which would justify criticism of it.

You may remember Mr Glissan from his Inner-Game-of-Justice Master Class series - here's the episode on self-control.