Royal Commissioner Dismisses Claims of Bias

31st August 2015

Royal Commissioner John Dyson Heydon AC QC today dismissed the application of the ACTU and other trade unions, seeking his disqualification from the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption claiming ‘apprehended bias’ by the Royal Commissioner.

The applications by the unions centred on the contention that an agreement made in April 2014 to deliver in August 2015 the Sixth Annual Sir Garfield Barwick Address, an event organised by the Lawyers Branch and the Legal Policy Branch of the NSW Division of the Liberal Party of Australia, might cause a fair-minded lay observer reasonably to apprehend that the Commissioner might not bring an impartial mind to the resolution of questions to be examined in the course of the Royal Commission’s inquiries.

Commissioner Heydon concluded that it is not the case that a fair-minded lay observer might apprehend that I might not bring an impartial mind to the resolution of the questions which the work of the Commission requires to be decided.

The arguments made against Commissioner Heydon focussed on two themes.

(1). Firstly, that a fair-minded observer might apprehend bias merely because of an agreement to give a legal speech at a function organised by two lawyer branches of the New South Wales Liberal Party.

(2). Secondly, that the fair-minded observer might apprehend that he might not approach the matters for decision impartially because the fair-minded observer might apprehend that his intention in agreeing to give the Sixth Annual Sir Garfield Barwick Address was to raise funds or assist in raising funds or generating support for the Liberal Party.

No one suggested the Commissioner was actually biased and had pre-judged the matters presented to the Royal Commission.

Rejecting the first line of argument, the Commissioner observed ‘If it was enough to disqualify a person from a role because the fair-minded observer might conclude that the person held political views, there would be no-one who could occupy the role.’ The Commissioner also rejected the argument that his participation in the event could have been characterised as intended to raise funds for the Liberal Party.

It is now expected that the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption will continue its work until it publishes it’s final report by 31 December 2015.