Do we remember this stinging rebuke of Shorten in 2012?
The Australian Oct 4 2012
"THE High Court has issued a stinging rebuke to Workplace Relations Minister Bill Shorten for his "partisan" intervention in litigation, at taxpayers' expense, on behalf of the Australian Education Union.
In a costs decision yesterday, High Court judge Dyson Heydon said he believed the commonwealth should have been forced to pay 15 per cent of the costs, even though it was not a party, because of the minister's "exceptional" intervention in the case.
Ultimately, however, the AEU, as the losing side, was hit with 100 per cent of the costs.
The costs decision followed a dispute between Bendigo TAFE and senior teacher Gregory Barclay, who was also an AEU official. The High Court last month ruled that Bendigo TAFE's chief executive had not breached Labor's Fair Work Act when she took disciplinary action against Mr Barclay.
In doing so, the High Court overturned a full Federal Court ruling that had given union delegates special protections under Labor's industrial regime.
Yesterday, the court unanimously ordered AEU to pay Bendigo TAFE's costs. In a separate judgment from the majority, Justice Heydon admonished the AEU for trying to argue it should not be hit with a costs order.
"The respondents' position is typical of the mindless and rancorous technicality which characterises litigation about industrial law," Justice Heydon wrote. "It is entirely without merit. That is particularly so in view of the extraordinary weakness of the respondents' substantive case on the appeal."
