Gillard makes Blewitt look credible
Piers Akerman
Daily Telegraph
Monday, November 26, 2012 (11:48pm)
JULIA Gillard has painted the AWU Reform Association slush fund fraud as a credibility contest between her and her former boyfriend’s old bagman Ralph Blewitt.
His word against mine, she asked the media, make your mind up!
That was a mistake.
She had just attempted to trash his name – if that were possible – with a character assassination of the type she has falsely claimed that someone working for the government ran against her before the 2007 election.
In fact, no-one from the Howard government did anything of the kind.
The incident goes to Gillard’s tactics though. Make a series of pre-emptive strikes in the hope that the media will concentrate on the smear rather than the substance.
Her press conference was the pre-emptive strike. She did not answer questions fully or she gave evasive responses unbefitting a Prime Minister.
Then she used her press conference performance as a shield against the lethal questions being lobbed at her by a really expert interrogator, the deputy Opposition leader, Julie Bishop.
In essence, Bishop zeroed in on a key document Gillard had prepared in August, 1991 as a a partner in Labor law firm Slater & Gordon’s industrial unit, to deal with a query her union boss boyfriend Bruce Wilson had about the appointment of a branch executive
The letter dealt in intricate detail with the niceties of the rules of the AWU. The same rules which would have made the slush fund Gillard admits setting up for Wilson and Blewitt illegal under the union’s provisions.
Gillard said she was acting on instructions from Wilson and Blewitt but as a lawyer her duty was to ensure that the advice she was giving them was accurate.
Her first stop should have been the rules of the AWU when she was asked to set up the AWU Reform Association.
Those rules clearly state that any funds are to be directed to the AWU Bank Accounts as per the AWU National Executive.
Financial decisions at branch level must be made by at least fifty per cent of the Branch Executive (bearing in mind that Gillard had been looking at the authority of Branch Executives in 1991 for Wilson) and it would have been obvious to anyone familiar with the AWU and acting for the union that Wilson and Blewitt did not make up 50 per cent of the Branch Executive.
Gillard did not answer Bishop’s question on the matter.
Similarly, she did not explain why she did not alert the AWU – Slater & Gordon’s client – that she had set up the slush fund without starting a file.
Gillard must explain why she did not include her work for her boyfriend, who she repeatedly said was an AWU executive, in the firm’s file of work for the AWU if she believed there was nothing wrong with acting for him?
A lot of her answers to the press were just too cute.
A lawyer who gives advice to a client about establishing an association usually describes the assignment as establishing an association. Not Gillard though. She was at pains to distance herself from the action though she corresponded with the industrial registrar about the establishment of the association and its bona fides.
Still, the bank corresponded with her – it must have been mistaken about her role, also.
And she could not recall whether $5000 had ever fetched up in her private bank account.
Even today, a thirty-something woman would probably remember if such a sum appeared in her account without explanation.
Blewitt appeared on the 7.30 Report and despite the usual haranguing from presenter Leigh Sales appeared confident and unshaken.
As one reader has said “I have met Ralph and there is no doubt he is a fraudster (but he is a straight shooter), but to take the word of the main fraudster (Wilson) as somehow our signal to let it all go is a nonsense.”
I have to agree. If Blewitt is a low life, what is Wilson, Gillard’s old lover, and the main fraud in this saga?
Blewitt has made a sworn statement to the police and will continue to assist them.
Gillard has fobbed off the press and then been less than open with the Australian people by telling our elected representatives that they will have to make do with her press statements if they want to know about the slush fund.
She is dudding us and she is making a mockery of the parliamentary process.
Given her carbon dioxide tax lie, her obfuscation about the funding for the NDIS and Gonsky, why would anyone be surprised?
But Labor voters, particularly union members, may want to know where the missing money went and they may want to find out why Gillard is being less than transparent about her role in the establishment of the slush fund.
Like Craig Thomson and the HSU, at the bottom of this story are thousands of workers who have been ripped off.
They aren’t being helped now by the Labor prime minister.
In fact, when it comes to credibility on this issue, Ralph Blewitt looks a great deal more trustworthy than Gillard - thanks for asking Julia.
