Tuungafasi Manase charged with perjury after giving evidence at trade union royal commission in Canberra
Updated
A man charged with perjury after giving evidence at the trade union royal commission has been released on bail after appearing before a Canberra court.
Tuungafasi Manase, 29, was arrested by ACT police last night just after 7:00pm and charged with one count of perjury.
This afternoon, Manase appeared in the ACT Magistrates Court where his lawyer indicated he would plead not guilty to the charge.
He has been released on bail and is expected to be back before the court in October.
He was ordered to surrender his passport and told not to go near Elias Taleb, who he gave evidence about at the royal commission.
Manase is the third person to be charged while the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption is in Canberra investigating the activities of the ACT branch of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU).
Manase is an associate of one of those men - former CFMEU official Fihi Kivalu - who was arrested on blackmail charges.
The commission had previously heard evidence that Kivalu had demanded bribes from ACT builders to secure them work.
He has since pleaded not guilty to blackmail charges in the ACT Magistrates Court.
Another CFMEU official and former Canberra Raiders NRL player John Lomax was arrested by officers over alleged blackmail claims a week later.
He is yet to give evidence to the commission, but the CFMEU today said the union would help Lomax fight the allegations, calling on the Australian Federal Police (AFP) to drop any charges against him.
More details of Manase's perjury charge are not yet known, but he gave evidence to the commission in its first week.
At that time, counsel assisting the commission Richard Scruby reminded him a number of times that he was under oath as he denied writing a list outlining alleged bribes owed by a formwork contractor.
Mr Scruby: "Your duty is not intentionally to give false or misleading evidence about it. If you were to break that duty it would be an offence punishable on conviction by imprisonment for five years or a fine not exceeding $20,000. You understand that?"
Manase: "Yes."
Mr Scruby: "I just want to ask you again, looking at page 225, that is a document you copied, is it not, from a file?"
Manase: "No, that is not my handwriting, or I did not copy that."
Commissioner Dyson Heydon even went as far as to ask him to write out some text to compare handwriting.
When asked whether he was trying to protect Kivalu by giving false evidence, Manase did not respond.
The royal commission has called ACT CFMEU secretary Dean Hall, ACT assistant secretary Jason O'Mara and branch president Jason Jennings to appear in Sydney next week.
The hearings next week will deal specifically with CFMEU funds, not the allegations presented in the past fortnight at the Canberra hearings.
Those allegations will be dealt with by the royal commission in late August or early September.
ACCC turns its attention to alleged construction industry collusion
Allegations made at the trade union royal commission in Canberra have caught the attention of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).
It has a specialist team looking into evidence being presented about alleged cartel conduct, including price fixing, anti-competitive agreements and collusion.
The ACCC said while it does not generally comment on its investigations, the public nature of the allegations meant the circumstances were exceptional.
Topics: courts-and-trials, unions, royal-commissions, act, canberra-2600
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