The AWU scandal - But it still comes back to that form
Hedley Thomas makes the point I’ve discussed in the post below - that Julia Gillard’s brilliant performance yesterday still did not resolve the real issue.
Why did the application she helped to prepare to register the Australian Workers Union Workplace Reform Association not declare it was really a slush fund for her boyfriend?
The “slush fund” that Gillard had created three years earlier was a legal entity, an incorporated body, for the purpose of raising and holding funds for the re-election of union officials. It was designed to assist the personal advancement in the union of Gillard’s then boyfriend, Bruce Wilson, who was then the leader of the West Australian branch of the Australian Workers Union…
They could have called it the AWU re-election fund. Or the AWU vote-for-a-new-leader fund.
Instead, it was called the AWU Workplace Reform Association, a title completely at odds with its actual purpose. The written objects, or rules, for the association do not disclose the true purpose is to fund elections for union officials.
On the contrary, the rules stress purposes including the promotion of safer workplaces and skills training. In the formal application for the association, Gillard advised that it was formed for the purpose of “development of changes to work to achieve safe workplaces”.
In this way, its purported purpose had nothing to do with its actual purpose - as a “slush fund” for the re-election of Gillard’s then boyfriend. This is Gillard’s Achilles heel.
Yesterday, Gillard said she had not signed the document to set up the association and had only provided legal advice. Further, she said if the fund supported “trade union officials who would stand on a platform about reform and improvements in workplaces”, then it had fulfilled its stated role. But this later explanation, at her hour-long media conference, remains difficult to reconcile with the facts....
The reality is that if any of the documents lodged with the West Australian government agency had disclosed that the association’s true purpose was as a “slush fund” to help in the election of union officials, it would not have been registered.
It would not have been eligible under the legislation that governed such associations....
In her answers yesterday, the Prime Minister deftly moved the goalposts.... Gillard said: “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.”
There it is. If Gillard had given the WA government agency the same answer as she gave yesterday, the bureaucrats in Perth would likely have rejected the application outright. They would have seen it for what it was: a “slush fund” for the purpose of raising funds for the election of union officials.
Gillard’s explanations on this will raise more questions about trust, integrity and professionalism.
But Gillard yesterday brilliantly injected fresh and sexy topics for her side to debate: sexism, misogyny, the Mudoch hate media, the nasty Internet, the woman betrayed, American Tea Party politics and more. More red herrings than a fish factory.
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UPDATE
Graham Richardson is right:
Maybe it was because she was angry. Maybe it was because she had been goaded into action by a campaign she considered grossly unfair. This time the Prime Minister did what I have been desperately wanting her to do. She took charge. There was a commanding air about her and from the moment she began you knew this was a truly formidable woman.
Graham Richardson is wrong:
I will speak and write no more on this affair
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/andrewbolt/index.php/dailytelegraph/comm...