Tag: Julia Gillard

Slags …

This morning Slater & Gordon released a statement saying: “Slater & Gordon has consistently maintained, and still maintains, that at all times it has acted in accordance with its legal and ethical obligations in relation to all aspects of the AWU matter.”

It said it had obtained independent advice confirming that it: “was (and is) not permitted to divulge confidential and privileged information of one client to another client or any other party.”

The firm said it “acted for both a union and a union official (personally)” in the “AWU matter.”

“In acting for the official, Slater & Gordon obtained information: i). that was confidential to the official; and ii) the disclosure of which to the union would have represented a conflict between the interests of the union and the interests of the official,” the statement said.

“Slater & Gordon ceased acting for both clients after it became aware of this conflict situation.”

On the face of it this is a plea of not guilty, your honour, made by the entity Slater & Gordon, (commonly known as Slags, and it’s less typing). Implicit within it is that Slags as a whole at no stage did anything wrong. It might feel a little peeved that one of the Slags did some of the work in question without raising a file … it makes it hard for an entity to know what it was actually up to.

Within the not guilty plea is an admission. Whatever it was that the entity was up to led to a conflict of interest between two of its clients Bruce Wilson, Ms Gillard’s then boyfriend, and the AWU. A conflict so severe that dealings with both clients had to stop. Not guilty your honour but boy did we screw up.

Being in a relationship can interfere with the normal lawyer-client relationship. It can lead to the lawyer losing his or her objectivity, resulting in inaccurate advice and even a breach of duty to the court.”

Lay down misère …

Ms Gillard said people would have to choose whether they believed Mr Blewitt – a self-confessed fraudster who she said had been described by associates as “a complete imbecile, an idiot, a stooge, a sexist pig, a liar” – or the Prime Minister.

“It’s going to come down to Mr Blewitt’s word against mine … his word against mine, make your mind up.”

Smear …

Which raises the question of Ms Bishop’s actions as a lawyer representing CSR …

A few things that she didn’t do …

Julie Bishop:
– did not have an affair with a CSR board member,

– did not create a slush fund for her lover kept secret from the CSR board,

– did not create a file kept secret from her partners,

– did not prepare a slush fund with a deceptive name to make it seem it was for the benefit of CSR workers,

– did not fail to go to police when her lover used that fund to steal $400,000 meant to improve safety for CSR workers,

– did not help the lover (unwittingly) spend $100,000 of that stolen money to buy him a house,

– did not witness a power of attorney in her boyfriend’s favor that the donor claims was witnessed without him present and on a different date than the one stated.

– did not have anyone from CSR work on her renovations,

– did not have a builder she used turn up to CSR headquarters demanding payment, and

– did not get shown the door by her partners as a consequence of what she did.

Dismission …

Your dismission, should you choose to accept it …

Over the past 11 years, I have been called upon to investigate many people for workplace misconduct. The hardest people to investigate are high-achieving, high-profile women executives. Their starting position is always a haughty refusal to answer questions or participate in investigations they consider beneath them. Next they attempt to retain control by trying to impose their conditions and time frames on the investigation. They attempt to distract from their own conduct by focusing on the poor conduct of others. Some flail about, claiming the status of bullying or sexism victim.

A must read from Grace Collier, chief executive of Australian Dismissal Services, in the Fin Review … good to see a Fairfax paper covering this issue.

The Asian Century …

One can’t doubt the importance of this issue to the Gillard government. After all, it has honoured the little Asian century maker, Sachin Tendulkar. Good on him.

What’s more it has produced a great little white paper proclaiming the significance of Asia which it seems to have just discovered. It sets out some goals for us. Goals which unfortunately can’t be achieved with the governments present policy settings. In fact, whilst the private sector have been doing ever increasing business in Asia, government has been cutting its expenditure in the region for years …

Agreeable announcements are good for the government. It’s only when it does stuff that it stuffs up.

Shame it translated the white paper into Mandarin … it stuffed up.

Nicci Rox …

THE nation’s chief law maker Nicola Roxon is totally satisfied the prime minister did not act improperly over the setting up of a union slush fund.

Julia Gillard has consistently denied she did anything wrong or personally benefited from setting up the Australian Workers Union Workplace Reform Association for her then partner Bruce Wilson while working as a lawyer in the 1990s.

Ms Gillard has conceded the association was a slush fund that Wilson and other union officials used to fund their re-election campaign.

She told West Australian authorities the purpose of the association was for training and workplace safety.

Federal Attorney-General Nicola Roxon says allegations against Ms Gillard are unwarranted.

“I’m totally satisfied that Julia had not done anything improper or anything unlawful and in fact no actual allegation of impropriety is being made against her,” Ms Roxon told ABC radio.

I wonder how much comfort that gives our Julia given the company it puts her in …

Ms Roxon was asked whether Mr Thomson should be suspended from the ALP until the matter is resolved.

“It’s an option in theory, and maybe as things develop,” she said.

“But we haven’t had actually any content. There’s been all this swirling allegation [but] no one actually is aware of what is being alleged in detail.”

And she was vigorously defending Mr Slipper after having every opportunity to read the emails that ensured he had no prospect of a defense …

On Tuesday night, it emerged during a Senate estimates hearing that the Attorney-General was briefed on June 9 about the hundreds of dubious or distasteful text messages sent by Slipper to his staffer James Ashby.

Four days later, on June 13, Roxon instructed the Solicitor-General to seek to have Ashby’s case struck out. She also gave instructions to seek a waiver for the government to be allowed to use the texts to have Ashby sacked.

Also on June 13, in a further attempt to shut down the case, the government offered to pay damages to Ashby to settle his sexual harassment claim.

Two days later, despite her knowledge of the scale and nature of the texts sent by Slipper, the Attorney-General held a press conference and said this: ”The Commonwealth strongly believes that this process has been one which is really for an ulterior purpose … the Commonwealth has obtained a vast amount of material … It will be clearly shown … that there were in fact clear intentions to harm Mr Slipper and to bring his reputation into disrepute and to assist his political opponents and that was the purpose for the bringing of this claim.”

The political mischief in this case has never been in doubt. What was misleading about the Attorney-General’s statement was that the ”vast amount of material” was not merely vexatious. It buttressed a sexual harassment claim. It was also political dynamite.

Roxon also said something that was untrue: ”We aren’t bringing a strike-out application; Mr Slipper is.”

The shadow attorney-general, Senator George Brandis, told me yesterday: ”These texts, on any view, contain dozens of instances of predatory sexual conduct. So the Attorney-General’s claim that this was merely a vexatious case was extraordinary. Any person who read the texts would know instantly that Ashby had a case.

So, Ms Roxon, do you really believe it was entirely kosher to set up a slush fund? Do you believe Ms Gillard was present when Mr Blewitt signed the power of attorney that she witnessed? Did Mr Hem drop five grand in her bank account? Was her house renovated with proceeds of the slush fund? Do you think she may have withheld details of a swindle from her client the AWU? Do the missing documents cause you no concern?

Or is it the case that Julia is exactly as innocent as the other people you have recently defended?

Five thousand …

Interesting news in The Australian this morning and, in case you can’t reach beyond the pay wall, here it is …

A UNION employee who was concerned about wrongdoing told the national head of the Australian Workers Union in June 1996 that he deposited about $5000 cash into Julia Gillard’s bank account at the request of her then boyfriend Bruce Wilson.

The disclosure by Wayne Hem forms part of a contemporaneous and confidential 150-plus-page diary that was kept by the then AWU joint national secretary, Ian Cambridge, now a Fair Work Australia commissioner…

In a statutory declaration signed in Melbourne on Sunday and in lengthy interviews with The Australian over the past fortnight, Mr Hem declared he had deposited the money after being given the account details of Ms Gillard along with a wad of $100 and $50 notes by Mr Wilson, an official in the AWU’s Victorian branch.

Ms Gillard, then a salaried partner at law firm Slater & Gordon, was Mr Wilson’s girlfriend and solicitor at the time.

Ms Gillard had provided legal advice in 1992 that helped Mr Wilson and his union ally, Ralph Blewitt, set up a slush fund – the AWU Workplace Reform Association – which the two men used in the ensuing years to issue bogus invoices and fraudulently receive hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The Prime Minister issued a short statement through spokesman Sean Kelly.

“As The Australian is well aware, the Prime Minister has made clear on numerous occasions that she was not involved in any wrongdoing,” Mr Kelly said.

“I also note that despite repeatedly being asked to do so, The Australian has been unable to substantiate any allegations of wrongdoing.”

But remember …

But it is vital to highlight what the Hem entry does not say – and what Hem does not say now.

He does not say Gillard ever wanted her union boss boyfriend to ask Hem to put about $5000 into her account in mid 1995.

Nor does Hem say that she knew she was receiving a financial benefit. There is no evidence of that and there could be several innocent explanations for the payment. We do know, however, that Hem was concerned about dishonesty by Wilson and this prompted him to blow the whistle.

On Diaries …

The disclosure by Hem to Cambridge [in 1996 about the deposit] came eight months after concerns were first raised publicly by a Liberal minister, Phil Gude, in Victoria’s parliament, about Gillard allegedly getting a benefit in relation to the renovation of her house. Gude wanted a probe into what he was told at the time. He has insisted union officials had been to see him with evidence that Gillard was a beneficiary of union money.

Gude told the Victorian parliament in October 1995 that Gillard had been forced to leave her law firm; that she was directly linked to the misappropriation of union funds; that she had benefited from renovations to her own house; and that she had to pay money back to the AWU so that she and Wilson could “cover their tracks”.

Gude made his claims a short time after Gillard’s confidential tape-recorded interview on September 11, 1995, with Peter Gordon – and her abrupt departure from the firm. Its partners had lost trust and confidence in her.

Gillard told The Australian immediately after she was accused in the Victorian parliament in 1995: “Every allegation raised about me is absolutely untrue; there is not a shred of truth in any of it.”

On Hem …

BANK documents show the man who claims he was told to pay about $5000 into Julia Gillard’s bank account was entrusted to deposit more than $100,000 in cheques into an Australian Workers Union secret slush fund.

Wayne Hem, 58, told The Australian in interviews and in a statutory declaration that he was given the cheques in mid-1995 and told to put them into “a bank account for something I recall as the AWU Welfare Fund”.

He said that Ms Gillard’s then boyfriend Bruce Wilson, the corrupt branch head of the AWU, handed him the cheques on several occasions and told him to go to the Commonwealth Bank to make the deposits…

In a September 1996 affidavit filed in the Industrial Relations Court, the AWU’s national head Mr Cambridge named the Victorian Welfare slush fund account as one “used to hold and/or launder union funds, as a step in the conversion of those funds to unauthorised, invalid, irregular and possibly illegal uses”.

Mr Cambridge stated in his affidavit that the account was unknown to other union officials, and involved payments totalling $234,000.