progressiveslol wrote on Aug 25^th, 2012 at 4:31pm:


What sort of bullsh!t is Lolly The Brainless believing now? What kind of cheque is that supposed to be? A five year old wouldn't believe that rubbish! Where's the signature? Why is the account name in three different fonts sizes? And why is it in the wrong place?

Moreover why would money supposedly going into a "slush fund" be getting paid to Slater and Gordon FROM the "slush fund"? That'd be a payment for their legal work wouldn't it?

And anyway how would anyone get a copy of a 19 year old cheque anyway when banks normally destroy long before that?

The men behind PM's hellish week

Julia Gillard has replied to her critics over an old union fraud scandal that has come back to haunt her, but the lawyers who dug it up make no apologies.

IT WAS two retired lawyers from Melbourne who sparked a fresh examination of the 17-year-old Australian Workers Union funds scandal that has long stalked Julia Gillard.

Harry Nowicki, a former personal injuries lawyer who worked for the now defunct Builders Labourers Federation, and Richard Thomas, formerly a prominent lawyer with Arnold Thomas & Becker who did some work for the AWU in Victoria, say they joined forces in an effort to finally get to the truth about the scandal.

The pair reject Ms Gillard's assertions on Thursday that the present allegations are nothing more than a smear campaign being driven by ''misogynists'' and ''nutjobs''.

''Nothing could be further from the truth,'' Mr Thomas said. ''In fact, it all started again publicly when one of her own ministers [Robert McClelland] raised it in Parliament.''

The lawyers, who have been investigating the union for months, said the questions were coming from within the labour movement. ''People want to get rid of the past,'' Mr Thomas said. ''They want the Labor Party to be squeaky clean and not controlled by faceless men and unions.''

The men say that, like Watergate, it is not the scandal itself but the subsequent cover-up over AWU funds that is the problem.

Mr Thomas said that, when the scandal broke in the 1990s, he supported the opponents of Ms Gillard's then boyfriend, AWU organiser and now accused fraudster Bruce Wilson. ''I assisted Bob Kernohan, a friend of mine who was Mr Wilson's opponent, along with Bill Shorten, who also assisted Mr Kernohan as his close friend,'' he said. ''Wilson at the time was being accused of extravagant spending. There was a very strong feeling about getting him out.''

Mr Nowicki began researching the AWU for a book. When he discovered a lot more information about Mr Wilson's time as an AWU organiser and the alleged scam of taking money from construction companies, he asked Mr Thomas to help him dig a bit deeper. ''I couldn't believe it when I saw what Harry had unearthed,'' Mr Thomas said.

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/the-men-behind-pms-hellish-week-201...

Factional rats in Labor's ranks behind smear campaign, writes Samantha Maiden

WHEN Julia Gillard blamed "nut jobs and misogynists" for peddling rumours about her past on the internet she left out the rats in her own ranks.

So did Stephen Conroy.

"This is just a dirty, filthy, smear by the Liberals," the Communications Minister said.

But everyone in the ALP knows that's not where this grubby story begins and ends.

And nobody knows that better than the former Victorian MP Phil Gude, now enjoying his retirement on the Mornington Peninsula.

Seventeen years on, Gude is still keeping the secret of the Labor figure who brought him the dirt file on Julia Gillard all those years ago.

It was information he used to publicly air the first allegations against Gillard and union official Bruce Wilson in Victorian Parliament in 1995.

"It was brought to me by the Labor Party," Gude confirmed this week.



When the story resurfaced this month, Gude picked up the phone and rang the mystery Labor benefactor.

"I phoned him. I've been in contact with him recently," he says.

"I thought we'd have a bit of a yap and reminisce. But I made a commitment at the time to keep the parties totally confidential. And I will honour that. There were pre-selection issues. There was a bit of getting even," he concedes.

"The issue for me was not Julia Gillard back in those days. It was the potential corruption in the union. It was the issue then and it's the issue today."

There was a union whistleblower too.

"It was a person of respect in the union movement, not the AWU, who was concerned it was going to give all unions a real stink," Gude says.

The Prime Minister told the ABC's Australian Story six years ago she suspected as much.

"I didn't know for sure that you know Labor party people had urged Phil Gude to do this, but it became apparent to me afterwards when one of his staff members basically indicated to me that that was the case," Gillard said.

Half of Gillard's frontbench has known the story for decades. Bill Shorten was directly involved in the AWU's fight to clean up the mess, as was Robert McClelland, who later penned his masters thesis on it.

Nicola Roxon and Stephen Conroy were all around at the time. Martin Ferguson was the ACTU president in the mid-1990s.

The other player watching with interest this week was Ian Smith, the former Liberal MP falsely accused by Gillard's old law firm Slater & Gordon around the same time of bashing his pregnant lover and political staffer Cheryl Harris.

Cheryl Harris's lawyer was Bernard Murphy, who was later appointed as a Federal Court judge by the Gillard government.

Mr Smith was later awarded a big payout over the handling of the case.

"It was big money because they were wrong. They ruined my career," Smith says.

"I am a very forgiving person. But I do hold grudges against Slater & Gordon - their conduct was despicable."

Gillard said this week she had no direct involvement with the case, but conceded the internal fallout was another reason why working at Slater & Gordon became unpleasant.

Then in 2001, another Liberal MP Geoff Leigh reheated the allegations after a disgruntled AWU official Bob Kernohan paid him a visit.

Gillard's best friend Robyn McLeod had run against Leigh in the state seat of Mordialloc. Gillard had run McLeod's campaign as her campaign director. The next time the allegations surfaced was after the Australian Story episode aired in 2006.

"You might notice she left out one of her boyfriends when she went on Australian Story," a senior Labor figure told me at the time.

This week, I rang that individual wondering why he was happy to smear Gillard with the allegation six years ago, but was now publicly decrying the allegations as baseless.

The reason was simple he said, without a touch of irony: "Julia Gillard was in the Left faction back then," he replied.

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/factional-rats-in-labors-ranks-beh...

She's got plenty of enemies.

Gillard was an incompetent lawyer at Young & Naive. She is an incompetent PM now. She replaced an even more incompetent PM.

Labor - first a tragedy, then a farce.

Is the Prime Minister a crook? Part VIII

Peeling back the putrid layers

Julia Gillard employs no fewer than 1,600 media advisers (spin doctors). The cost? $150,000,000 pa. There are more, but Ministers like Albanese won’t disclose details.

It appears much more of our taxes needs
to be spent on spin doctors if our chief spinster Gillard’s involvement in massive union corruption is to remain undetected.

I would like to take you on a little trip to the WA Goldfields... to Kalgoorlie’s twin city, Boulder.

WA newspaper archives show Bruce Wilson travelled to Boulder/Kalgoorlie in 1992 to attempt to allay union members' concerns about his decision to transfer the management of large sums of union members’ money to a new AWU account in Northbridge, Perth.

The money resided at the time in a separate account called, "The Goldfields Fatal Accident and Death Fund". This money, donated from union members themselves, was to financially assist bereaved families of deceased union members.

Wilson wanted management of the account shifted to the AWU's head office in Perth. Wilson was the then WA boss of the AWU. He and Ralph Blewitt were to be sole signatories on the account and union members were justifiably apprehensive.

They were wary of Wilson's alleged fraudulent activities and demanded a meeting. It was set down for 8pm in the Boulder Town Hall.

Wilson knew he would never convince members of the legitimacy of the proposed move himself. So he introduced to the stage a person of high legal authority to assure union members there was no need for concern.

The person he introduced was Julia Gillard. Members were unaware Gillard was his lover. She was presented as an important Industrial Lawyer from Victoria and an official representative of the Labor stalwart law firm, Slater & Gordon.

Gillard addressed union members at length explaining why the money should be moved and that there was nothing to worry about. She insisted the members were in the good hands of Slater & Gordon and their best interests would at all times be protected.

Gillard must have done an excellent job because the account containing approximately $1 million was shifted to a private Northbridge, Perth account. The address for all correspondence was nominated as Northbridge Post Office, Box 253.

Three years later, police were asked by incoming AWU State Secretary, Tim Daly, to investigate one amount of $145,000 withdrawn from "The Goldfields Fatal Accident and Death Fund" to buy two holiday units in Kalbarri.

[I should say at this point that Ralph Blewitt never questioned what Wilson wanted. He simply signed whatever he was asked to. He was to sign fraudulent documents Gillard had drawn up for Wilson in the name of Workplace Reform Association Inc. Blewitt was also totally unaware of a mortgage, arranged in his name by Slater & Gordon, over another house Wilson bought from stolen AWU funds in Kerr Street, Fitzroy. Wilson, according to police files, used a stamp of Blewitt’s signature whenever he needed it.]

Despite the WA Major Fraud Squad's Detective David McAlpine’s keenness to lay charges, it didn't happen. The Kalbarri holiday units, were subsequently sold. Again the laundered money vanished. It was only the tip of a very large iceberg.

Wilson was also negotiating a "Workplace Reform Agreement" with Thiess at their Dawesville (Mandurah) site. He had invoiced Thiess himself for 220 hours worked per month, every month, at a rate of $36.00 per hour. But did not on any occasion even visit the site.

Thiess raised cheques on each of Wilson's invoices. Each cheque was deposited in, and promptly withdrawn from, the sham Northbridge account. This is commonly known as a "secret commission". It is highly illegal.

Thiess didn't seem to care that Wilson was never seen.

Although the WA Police wanted Blewitt and Wilson charged they could not convince Thiess to co-operate.

From FOI material we have recently received from the WA Major Fraud Squad, it is clear that Thiess WA was reluctant to press charges of any kind. Thiess insisted they believed they were paying a branch of the AWU. Their reluctance to press charges may have been due to not wanting to rock the AWU boat, acquiescence in the deal or the interesting relationship between Wilson and Thiess' CEO, Joe Trio; Trio is Wilson's brother-in-law.

Another seven cheques totalling $112,000 found their way into the Northbridge, Perth account curiously from Melbourne Water, a Statutory Vic. Government Authority.

Now, you might ask, why the hell would a Victorian Government QUANGO be paying a Perth-based union for any damn thing?

The connection is this: Gillard was, and still is, a very close friend of a Robyn Mcleod. McCleod was Gillard's house-mate and she bought half of Gillard's Abbottsford property.

Remember, Wilson was joint boss of WA and Vic AWU for this period and was drawing two wages

And guess who Wilson engaged to negotiate the Melbourne Water contract?

Yep, the $300,000 pa, SA Rann Govt Water Commissioner, Robyn Mcleod. The plot thickens by the minute and we nut-jobs are supposed to stop asking questions?

The question that must be asked, and will soon be answered, is how could Gillard have been Wilson's lover for over four years and not know what was going on? He carried a wad of notes that would choke a horse and was purchasing multiple properties for cash with extorted funds.

Gillard admits she was involved and indeed complicit in the fraud, but now claims she didn’t know what Wilson's intentions were. Mmmm, didn’t know? Really? Convincing workers in Boulder to part with their hard-earned funeral savings to buy holiday units and she didn’t know? Where did she think the mouth of this river of money's source was?

To say she didn't know beggars belief. Either she is a simpleton (which she is not) or she is treating us as simpletons. The latest photo depicts her as definitely not blonde and she was an industrial lawyer and partner in the most notorious law firm in the land. She didn’t know what she, or he, was doing?

When Gillard acrimoniously broke-up with Wilson, she was more familiar with his scams than poor Blewitt. So, why didn't she go to the police? After all, they were champing on the bit waiting to charge him. All they needed was some corroborative evidence. Could it be that she and others would be found guilty of aiding and abetting?

This goes directly with the other thread "does my bum look big in prison blues" http://www.ozpolitic.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1345982398/0#0

So, why are police never successful in prosecuting union fraud cases? Simply because union bosses and developers refuse to cooperate. They will neither supply nor give evidence to enable a successful prosecution for fear of retribution or incrimination.

The glacial HSU East branch investigation by the union-dominated FWA is testimony to the futility of expecting delinquent crooks to investigate delinquent crooks.

FWA Commissioner Ian Cambridge, when an AWU Boss, called for a Royal Commission into his union! He has since been silenced by Gillard appointing him as a judge to the Federal Court. Now he can’t discuss the matter.

We 'nut-job, sexist misogynists' are really not supposed to ask these questions? Not one has been answered.

As I have said repeatedly, Abbott refuses to be involved. I can't blame him. But the only Honourable Member left in the Labor Party, Former Attorney General Rob McClelland, will not rest until these matters are resolved. Gillard sacked him.

Criminal elements, like small fish Craig Thomson, (who had Gillard’s “full confidence” until the bitter end) are deeply embedded in the ALP. They are protected by the ALP and their court costs are covered by the ALP via the unions. HSU’s Williamson has ripped $20 million from lowly paid workers.

The money these mobsters embezzle from innocent workers is tax exempt. It’s like taking prize candy from a kid and there are no penalties when caught.

It is the Labor system, it is the culture and it has become enmeshed in the sophisticated involvement of Left wing Law Firms like Slater & Gordon and Maurice Blackburn who have made an art form of ripping off needy claimants.

Abbott refrains from demanding an immediate Royal Commission because Gillard and her Union mobsters must never be allowed to set narrow terms of reference. My information is that Abbott will move on the unions as soon as he gains Office. His will be a Royal Commission with the widest possible terms of reference.

The main protector from union prosecution is Bill Shorten, another product of a Left wing law firm. He has successfully shut down the HSU investigation by sequestrating the union and is currently busy trying to bury the AWU/Gillard/Wilson investigation.

Isolated cases eh? Try keeping a lid on this one, Billy boy... we have much more on you.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Larry-Pickering/236991276355038

Correction to Part VIII:

Gillard appointed AWU Boss Cambridge as Commissioner to FWA.

He now refuses to comment on his call for a Royal Commission.

Apologies!

Yes, good advice to yourself, PM – don’t fall into that old trap of terminological inexactitude. Only the term she used, though pejorative, was nevertheless accurate: it was a slush fund. And she knew it, as she admitted, when interviewed by Peter Gordon.

PM: I was a solicitor at Slater & Gordon. I assisted with the provision of advice regarding the setting up of an association, the [AWU] Workplace Reform Association that you refer to. My understanding is that the purpose of the Association was to support the re-election of a team of union officials and their pursuit of the policies that they would stand for re-election on.”

“Assisted with the provision of advice”? She was the sole member of the firm to provide the advice to her union-rorting boyfriend Bruce Wilson. Indeed, she did not open a file on the matter and it remained a secret from her firm’s other partners, who knew nothing of it. From Gillard’s September, 1995, Slater & Gordon “exit” interview:

Peter Gordon: Yes. And to the extent that work was done on that file in relation to that, it was done by you?

Gillard: That's right.

Gordon: And did you get advice from anyone else in the firm in relation to any of those matters?

Gillard: No, I didn't.

Now, back to Thursday's presser:

PM: It was my understanding that the Association would engage in fundraising activities, including, for example, there being regular payroll deductions from union officials who would be putting their money together to support their re-election campaign and that they may well have other fundraising activities like hosting dinners where it would be transparent to people that the money was going to support their re-election campaign.

My role in relation to this was I provided advice as a solicitor. I am not the signatory to the documents that incorporated this Association. I was not an office bearer of the Association. I had no involvement in the working of the Association.

I provided advice in relation to its establishment and that was it.


So she admits it was to be a slush fund. Did she check with the AWU to see that the objects of the Association she helped to set up were permitted or/and legal? Slater & Gordon’s client was, after all, the AWU, not her lover Bruce Wilson.

JOURNALIST: Can you say categorically, Prime Minister, that none of the funds in this entity were used to pay for renovations on your house?

PM: I’ve dealt with this allegation a lot in the past and let’s be very clear about it. I paid for the renovations on my home in St Phillip Street in Abbotsford. Like millions of other Australians, I had the unhappy experience that I had a few blues with contractors along the way.


At the time Gillard was interviewed by Slater & Gordon, she gave convoluted, long-winded, answers to this simple question. In the end, she could not rule out that AWU money had not paid for renovations on her Abbotsford property.

JOURNALIST: Are you satisfied, was your conduct as a lawyer throughout this matter ethical?

PM: Yes.         

As Peter Gordon said, Gillard does have a “very robust sense of her own integrity”.

JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, do you think that, you say that you weren’t a signatory to that initial document.

PM: No, I was not.

JOURNALIST: Did you help to draft the document that you knew was false because the purpose of the Association was fundraising for a union election, not workplace safety, as stated in that document?

PM: … let me re-state it. My understanding of the purpose of this Association was to support the re-election of union officials who would run a campaign saying that they wanted re-election because they were committed to reforming workplaces in a certain way, to increasing occupational health and safety, to improving the conditions of the members of the union.

That was my understanding of the purpose of the Association, and so I provided legal advice for the Association. The document you refer to is not signed by me. The section of the document you refer to was not written by me.

Gillard is again evasive and won’t answer the question, “Did you help to draft the document that you knew was false…?” Yet she goes on to give a very tenuous argument as to how the slush fund was consistent with the stated objects of the Association, which mention nothing about raising money for re-election of union officials. Why? Her strained argument appears to confirm that she is admitting that she drafted the articles and that she knew at the time they were fraudulent – the Association could not have been accepted for registration if its true purpose, to support her boyfriend’s career, had been known.

JOURNALIST: The purposes of this, it talks about it being a workplace reform association which people would take to be for the benefit of workers. Nowhere in that does it say it was for the purposes of re-election of officials?

PM: Well, I’m being clear with you about this. I understood then the purpose of the association was to support trade union officials who would stand on a platform about reform and improvements in workplaces.


Please be clear because, PM, you’ve been anything but so far. That argument is concocted – then and now. Why not mention in the Associations objects that funds were to be collected to re-elect union officials if that was part of a “workplace safety” program? The assertion wouldn’t pass the smell test if you soaked it for a month in a vat of Chanel No. 5.

JOURNALIST: Ms Gillard, the Melbourne house that was later bought with funds from this Association. Can you tell us about how much you knew about that house, your involvement in that house and whether you knew it was paid for by the Association and how that relates to workplace safety?

PM: Well, I dealt with this matter in the interview with Peter Gordon and Jeff Shaw of which you now have the transcript.

My understanding about that house was that it was being purchased by Mr Blewitt. It was being purchased as an investment property. It was purchased on the understanding that Mr Wilson would be the tenant of the property and that Mr Blewitt was in a position with a mortgage, like an ordinary person, to purchase the property.

I did not, at the time, understand that any funds from any other source would be used to support the purchase, that is funds from the Association or any other accounts related to the union.


Yet, instead of bagman Blewitt, it was Wilson, with power of attorney drawn up by Gillard, in attendance at the auction, who bid on the property, if Phillip Coorey in the Sydney Morning Herald is correct, also did the conveyancing. Gillard then stayed over at the house after Wilson moved in. These circumstances appear at odds, to say the least, with a normal real estate transaction for an individual. But Gillard said at the time, “it all made, you know, relatively sort of sensible sense.”

JOURNALIST: Can you tell us just quickly why didn’t you open a file on this matter, as would have been common practice?

PM: I’m glad you’ve asked me that question because it gives me the opportunity to clarify this. Working at Slater & Gordon in the industrial section as I did for a number of years, it was par for the course to routinely provide free advice to union officials and trade unions.

We worked closely with officials. We worked closely with trade unions. We would provide limited free advice to them. Of course at a particular point when a job became big or it was occasioning disbursements for the firm, like court-filing fees or barrister’s fees, a file would be opened.

But I would routinely sit with officials of a clothing trades union and provide them with free advice about pursuing a claim for an out-worker, and keep those documents either on a file labelled JEG General, my initials, Julia Eileen Gillard, or a file labelled CTU General, Clothing Trades Union, or sometimes on a file that you would create for the holding of those documents but, you would not go to the stage of formally opening it up on the system because you didn’t expect the matter to go further.

I’ll keep answering the questions so there’s no need to interrupt. I took the same approach in relation to this file for the Australian Workers Union [Workplace Reform] Association. With the benefit of hindsight, of course it would have been better that I had opened the file on the system, but at the time it did not strike me as a matter of particular significance.


That was not what Gillard saying in her 1995 S&G interview:

GILLARD: This, this was a more substantial job than that and really ought to have been opened on system, but I think, well, I don't have a specific recollection of thinking to myself should I open it on system or shouldn't I open it on system, but apparently I didn't.

Peter Gordon: Response redacted.


Let me guess. That redacted response from Peter Gordon was most likely an expression of absolute astonishment which may well have included [expletive deleted]

JOURNALIST: You said that this has come from a smear campaign, but there’s been MPs within your own party that have made statements to Parliament about this and the Fair Work Commissioner, Ian Cambridge, has called for a royal commission. Do you think there needs to be some sort of formal investigation so the process, we can move on from this and you can be cleared?

PM: Well you are conflating a number of things that is prejudicial to me. Mr Cambridge has never called for an inquiry into my conduct and you ought not to assert that. Mr McClelland made a statement to the Parliament which he has said subsequently did not relate to my conduct either.


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