The executive director of the union watchdog that launched a controversial raid on the Australian Workers' Union (AWU) says he assumed Michaelia Cash would have had a political agenda when she contacted him and asked him to investigate a decade-old donation to the activist group GetUp.
Chris Enright, who has been at the helm of the Registered Organisations Commission (ROC) since it was established by the Turnbull government in May 2017, took the stand in Melbourne on Thursday in the AWU’s Federal Court challenge over raids on its Sydney and Melbourne offices.
The union alleges the raids, on Oct. 24, 2017 were unlawful and had an "improper political purpose". Various media outlets were tipped off prior to the raids, with a scrum gathered outside the offices when police arrived around 4.30pm.
The raids were executed as part of a ROC investigation into donations made to GetUp over a decade ago, when the AWU was led by current Labor leader Bill Shorten.
Under questioning from union lawyer Herman Borenstein QC, Enright agreed "it was clear" that the allegations contained in a letter he received from Cash, who was the employment minister at the time, were "potentially damaging to the public standing of Mr Shorten and the AWU".
Asked if he was aware of Cash’s alleged political purpose in sending the letter, Enright replied: "I wasn’t aware of what the minister’s agenda was. Clearly the minister is on a political side of parliament that had an agenda. I was clearly aware of that.
"I can’t read into her mind, but I assume she had an agenda, put it that way."
Enright denied he went on to investigate the matter in order to help Cash pursue that agenda, and said he didn't feel it was incumbent on him to look into the matters she raised.
The court heard that Enright had started investigating the donations when he read about them in The Australian newspaper on Saturday Aug. 12, 2017.
On Aug. 16, a second article in the same paper said Cash had written to the ROC asking it to investigate — but Enright had received no such letter. After journalists started asking the ROC questions, Enright said, he decided to track the letter down.
He rang an employee named Sharon at the Department of Employment, who told him to ring Cash's office, where he left a message, the court heard.
Enright told the court that Cash’s chief of staff, Ben Davies, returned the call at 2.48pm and said the letter was probably lost in transit and he would email it. (A hard copy arrived via post 10 days later.)
Enright was questioned extensively about the timing of an email he sent to AWU boss Daniel Walton, and whether or not he had waited to receive the letter from Cash before he sent the email.
The letter for Walton was ready to go by 1.42pm, but not sent until 3.22pm on August 16 – after Enright had spoken to Davies, the court heard.
Enright said he couldn’t recall the reason for the delay but assumed it would have been because he was very busy.
“I have a great many duties. This was one thing I was doing of very many things I was doing on that day. I may well have been prioritising other matters,” he said.
Asked by Justice Mordecai Bromberg "Is it possible you were waiting for the minister’s letter?" Enright replied "No".
He added, after a pause: "Well, Your Honour, I was waiting for the minister’s letter. That’s not the reason for sending the letter to Mr Walton."
Asked why he personally — the most senior person at the ROC — rang the department and the minister’s office after queries from journalists, as opposed to the ROC media adviser at the time Sam Hunt, Enright said that he was the person who generally engaged with the department and that Hunt did not know enough about the ROC to be able to make the call.
"He would not have been able to have a reasonable discussion with a member of the department because of his lack of knowledge," Enright said.
Enright said the ROC "guard[ed] our independence jealously" and that he had not considered whether it was appropriate for him to be contacting the minister’s office, or for Cash to be writing to him to suggest an investigation.
“Thinking back now, I can’t recall thinking it was either appropriate or inappropriate for the minister to be sending a letter suggesting that the commissioner give consideration to investigating that,” he said.
The AWU launched its court challenge after BuzzFeed News revealed on Oct. 25, 2017 that Cash’s office had tipped off the media ahead of the raids.
Since the trial began on Feb. 11, it has heard evidence from Cash herself, as well as her former media adviser David De Garis, former chief of staff Davies and former ROC acting media adviser Mark Lee.
The hearing continues.