Williamson, who ran the Health Services Union like a personal fiefdom, pleaded guilty to four charges, including two counts of cheating and defrauding the union of almost $1 million, recruiting other people, including his son Chris, to hinder the police investigation and creating fraudulent documents to try to cover up his misdeeds.

In sentencing Williamson to seven and a half years in jail with a five-year non-parole period in March, 2014, District Court Judge David Frearson said his actions were "a parasitic plundering of union funds for pure greed".
"[It was] a reprehensible betrayal of the union and all its members," said the judge.

Williamson, 62, has lodged an appeal against his sentence claiming that the judge erred in not applying a 25 percent discount to his sentence and did not take into account mental health issues.

He also claims that he received "a greater sentence than required by law".

The former national president of the ALP was recently grilled via video from Cooma jail over the $5 million he has admitted misappropriating from his former union.

In 2013 Williamson signed an undertaking with his former union to repay the $5 million. He subsequently declared himself bankrupt.

Williamson told the court recently that all the money had gone on lifestyle expenses and private school fees for his five children.

Williamson's fall from grace began in 2011 when Fairfax Media revealed that Williamson and Craig Thomson, then a Federal MP, had both received American Express cards from the union's printers.

Thomson was later fined $25,000 for misusing union funds on prostitutes and other personal items.

After Strike Force Carnarvon was formed, a panicky Williamson instructed the printers to destroy any American Express card statements. They refused and instead assisted police.

The American Express cards were initially the major focus of the investigation but police soon found that due to the passage of years, there was a paucity of financial records to pursue criminal charges.

Instead they found an extraordinary array of other corrupt dealings on Williamson's part.

There was CANME, a family company Williamson used to bill the union more than $300,000 for falsely claiming his wife was doing archiving work.

Williamson then set about creating false invoices to appear as though the work had been done.

Williamson also pleaded guilty to corruptly receiving $600,000 in cash from December 2006 to February 2010 by getting a supplier to the union, Alf Downing, to inflate his prices. Mr Downing has since been ordered by the NSW Supreme Court to repay the union $4.3 million.

During a subsequent police raid in the union's headquarters, Williamson was caught with a suitcase full of documents which he had asked his son to smuggle out. Inside the suitcase were the bodgied-up CANME invoices.

At his sentencing hearing, Williamson, whose salary was $500,000, claimed that his own childhood poverty had left him with a burning ambition to make sure that his own five children would never want for anything.

The sentencing appeal is listed for mention in the Court of Criminal Appeal on 21 May.