... and the endless bureaucratic merry go round continues .. all the while buying Gillard a little more time.
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DPP declines to advise on HSU report
From: AAP May 02, 201211:51AM
THE Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions (CDPP) has declined to advise a Senate committee on whether a report into the embattled Health Services Union (HSU) could be released publicly without legal implications.
The Senate workplace committee is considering whether to table a report by Fair Work Australia into financial impropriety in the HSU's national office.
It is understood Craig Thomson, the union's former national secretary who has stepped aside from the ALP to sit as an independent MP, is one of those named in the report.
FWA general manager Bernadette O'Neill is considering whether to take any of the investigation report's findings to the Federal Court for action against former and current HSU officials.
She is expected to complete her work within the next fortnight and then provide the full report to the Senate committee for public release under parliamentary privilege.
The committee has been asked by one of those named in the report not to table the report as it would prejudice future court cases.
The committee chairman, Labor senator Gavin Marshall, asked the CDPP whether the officer believed tabling the report would prejudice future court cases.
In a letter to the committee released today, chief prosecutor Chris Craigie - who has seen the FWA report but does not consider it a brief of evidence - said he could not advise the committee.
"In circumstances where there has been no criminal investigation completed and no brief of evidence referred to my office, I am not able to say that my office is presently conducting or about to conduct criminal litigation such that would bring into consideration the principles you refer to (about subjudice)," Mr Craigie wrote.
