Fair Work Vice President Michael Lawler pressed the commission to pay for a last-minute business-class flight to New York, enabling him to travel with his girlfriend Kathy Jackson on one of her trips paid for with funds rorted from the Health Services Union. Fair Work was given three days’ notice to book the one-way ticket — costing upwards of $6000 — in July 2011. Mr Lawler told his boss — then Fair Work President Geoff Giudice — that he planned to attend an industrial relations conference in the US. Mr Lawler’s Qantas flight from Melbourne to New York on July 22 matches travel on the same day taken by Ms Jackson, according to Federal Court documents subpoenaed from Qantas.
