After the long-running scandal of the Health Services Union we did not require more evidence of the need for the labour movement to clean up its act. We got it anyway on Monday as the trade union Royal Commission trawled through accounts of one of a secretive slush fund founded by Bill Shorten's former union, The Australian Workers Union in 2008.
The commission heard how the employer-bankrolled Industry 2020 - first revealed by Fairfax Media in December 2012 - was used by former AWU Victorian secretary Cesar Melhem to build what counsel assisting the commission Jeremy Stoljar SC, described as a personal "fiefdom".
From 2008 to 2013, Melhem - now an upper house Labor MP - used Industry 2020 to curry favour with subfactional powerbrokers: as much as $100,000 was tipped into candidates contesting elections in the disgraced Health Services Union; curious payments were made to little-known companies associated with factional mates, thousands of dollars apparently were tipped into a western suburban soccer club well known for its links to suburban branch-stacking.
After detailing a string of mainly cash cheques to factional power brokers, Mr Stoljar went as far as to suggest Mr Melhem had used Industry 2020 to buy his seat in parliament.
Finally the Industry 2020 money that remained when Mr Melhem entered parliament in May 2013 found its way into another secretive slush fund, this one run by the Shorten-aligned plumbers union. Is that what employers like John Holland, Thiess and Visy expected when they handed over thousands to Melhem's fund-raisers from 2008?
On Monday, questions were also asked about unusual monthly payments directly to the AWU in the early 2000s by employer Chiquita Mushrooms, the union claiming the payments were in return for training.
Under questioning the company conceded the training amounted to one visit by a union official for maybe two hours, tops. The most troubling issue in the Chiquita deal is the commission's argument that the deal with the AWU coincided with an industrial agreement that lowered pay rates for mushroom pickers.
Bill Shorten was the AWU secretary at the time of the Chiquita deals. And in a factional sense he is a key beneficiary of Melhem's Industry 2020 antics. The Royal Commission may be, in part, a political witch hunt. But there is cause for concern none the less from the evidence before it. As if we need more.
