Posted in full for the benefit of those who may not get to read it due to the article being behind a paywall :
The decision by royal commissioner Dyson Heydon marks a definitive win for law and reason over confected outrage and brute politics. Did the unions really imagine they could exploit a trivial incident to destroy the reputation of a sitting royal commissioner and shut down the royal commission into union corruption? Did they really believe they could pull the strings of a royal commissioner in the same way they pull the strings of Labor politicians? Did they expect they could resort to the kind of intimidation in the royal commission hearing room that they have resorted to in workplaces?
They were wrong on all counts. In an age of confected outrage, where emotion trumps reason with increasing frequency and intensity, the decision by Heydon was a win for old-fashioned common sense and facts. Curiously, you wouldn’t have learned the salient facts from the ABC radio’s premier news program PM last night. Instead of reporting the real reasons claims by the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union, ACTU and other unions failed, the ABC’s Mark Colvin and Brendan Trembath spent most of their report ridiculing the fact Heydon said he did not have a computer and did not use email. Sinking to new levels of poor journalism, the national broadcaster chose to report how Heydon’s disclosure was mocked on Twitter.
GRAPHIC: Shooting down the unions’ arguments
So let’s do what the $1bn-funded ABC couldn’t manage to do: consider the facts. The various unions argued the agreement by Heydon to give the Sir Garfield Barwick address signalled he had “an affinity with, and partiality in favour of, the Liberal Party”, that he “had a political persuasion or allegiance toward the Liberal Party” or that he held “a political prejudice against the Australian Labor Party”. The unions based their apprehended bias claims on two arguments : first, that he accepted an invitation to address a Liberal Party event; second, that Heydon had the intention of raising funds, or generating support for the Liberal Party.
Heydon found the facts did not support either assertion. His decision was what you would expect from a judge who has earned a reputation as a “black-letter” lawyer: it was a dry, factual, carefully reasoned judgment. He found that a fair-minded observer, operating reasonably, with knowledge of all the relevant circumstances, could not conclude that a willingness to give a legal address such as the Barwick address indicated any predisposition on the speaker’s part towards the Liberal Party or against the ALP or the unions.
Addressing the claims in detail, Heydon pointed to an August 12 email confirming the Barwick address. It stated: “As you know, although nominally under the auspices of the Liberal Party lawyers’ professional branches, this is not a fundraiser — the cost charged is purely to cover dinner …” So much for the unions’ bogus argument that this was a cosy little Liberal Party event. As Heydon found, “nominal” means “in name only, not actual or real”. The lecture was purely legal. It was open to anyone. And it was widely publicised by the NSW Bar Association. Needless to say, Heydon didn’t point out that the NSW Bar Association was hardly a hotbed of conservative politics.
To prove the absence of bias, apprehended or otherwise, in agreeing to give the legal lecture, Heydon presented more facts, including a short precis of his intended address. Titled The Judicial Stature of Chief Justice Barwick Viewed from a Modern Perspective, Heydon intended to look at how the High Court operated under Barwick, the legal doctrines it followed, which subsequently have fallen out of fashion, changes in constitutional construction since Barwick’s day and how Barwick used his experience as a trial lawyer on the bench. There’s not a scintilla of politics in Heydon’s intended address. Heydon pointed to other facts that demolished union claims of apprehended bias: Michael Kirby gave the Alfred Deakin lecture while he was chairman of the Australian Law Reform Commission, the Earle Page lecture while he was president of the NSW Court of Appeal and the Neville Wran lecture when he was a High Court judge.
Indeed, he found that “if it was enough to disqualify a person from a role because a fair-minded observer might conclude that the person held political views, there would be no one who could occupy the role”. And as for the equally contrived claim of the legal lecture being a fundraiser, the same August 12 email knocks that claim over too.
The campaign to remove Heydon for apprehended bias marks one of the darkest episodes of hysteria-fuelled politics in Australia. It is an apt reminder the abuse of union power in Australia has never been more insidious.
Union leaders sunk to new levels of desperate and debased tactics to remove Heydon and derail the royal commission because they have so much to lose.
Their chorus line of confected outrage is meant to distract us from evidence to the royal commission of union thuggery, intimidation, secret deals, secret payments (including an undeclared $40,000 paid to Bill Shorten by construction company Unibuilt when he was a union leader to fund his 2007 political campaign), bogus memberships to boost the power of unions, and deals where employers paid for membership dues. Even current Victorian boss of the Australian Workers Union, Ben Davis, told the royal commission he was “decidedly uncomfortable” about the creation of bogus memberships and said deals where employers paid membership dues undermined the negotiating power of unions.
This episode is a reminder too that the abuse of union power extends beyond the workplaces of union members and deep into the Labor Party. Union influence over Labor means the alternative government and alternative prime minister of Australia cannot take a responsible stance against union corruption in the national interest. How can they when most Labor MPs, including Shorten, are products of the union movement, owe their positions to union patronage and the party depends on union money to win elections?
Had Heydon decided to step down on Monday and effectively rewarded the brazen attempts at character assassination by the unions and Labor, it would have set a dangerous precedent for the future. It would have been a shot in the arm for further abuse of union power and, more broadly too, a boon for a growing industry of activists who use emotion to drown out facts.
Heydon’s decision showed that facts can trump confected outrage. More important, Heydon’s decision proves the abuse of union power that reaches into workplaces and into the Labor Party does not extend into the hearing room of the royal commission.
Thank you Janet 
You are so in the poo now IF. Mentioning Devine and the DT. Perhaps you will be allowed some leeway (???) as Devine once wrote for Fairfax.
Don't look up though, because a flock of left wheeling parrots is, I think , about to home-in on your location..
well that's exactly right isn't it??
on the basis that certain people always quote from the Daily telegraph or the OZ, (including your good self) counteracts any of your argument about other papers anyone else quotes from being 'leftist' or 'jihadi" ( according to peter Dutton)
oddly enough Peter Van Onselen who was once an abbott advisor now a columnist for the OZ and host of PVO on sky is constantly being attacked by right wing extremists accusing him of being a lefty as he takes a more 'middle of the road' view. I think he and Devine are a bit at odds atm over SSM 
@monman12 wrote:You are so in the poo now IF. Mentioning Devine and the DT. Perhaps you will be allowed some leeway (???) as Devine once wrote for Fairfax.
Don't look up though, because a flock of left wheeling parrots is, I think , about to home-in on your location..
The coveted five laughy-face award
@debra9275 wrote:well that's exactly right isn't it??
on the basis that certain people always quote from the Daily telegraph or the OZ, (including your good self) counteracts any of your argument about other papers anyone else quotes from being 'leftist' or 'jihadi" ( according to peter Dutton)
oddly enough Peter Van Onselen who was once an abbott advisor now a columnist for the OZ and host of PVO on sky is constantly being attacked by right wing extremists accusing him of being a lefty as he takes a more 'middle of the road' view. I think he and Devine are a bit at odds atm over SSM
It's about the message, Deb, not the messenger.
"the daily telegraph is like that bella, I take their articles with a grain of salt, if I read them that is"
The DT was the AWOL captain A3s favourite pick, the DT, who was actually happy to "argue the message" and not the messenger.
Far better the red-rags: AIMN or the IA, if the messenger is your criteria, well actually red online rags with their open "source" meaning anyone can contribute, but always seem to be of a MYOP colour !
The AIMN is a platform for citizen journalists and bloggers to write and engage in an independent media environment.
IA supports quality investigative journalism, as well as citizen journalism.
Gotta luv those "citizen" journalists and their messages.
Of course one must not forget the past quoted Jakarta Post and the Tehran based Press TV as sources to titillate a partisan appetite, even though the fare did not match the menu
.
