Last updated: July 14, 2014



Equal pay for women will take decades

Generic image of young women working and using a laptop PC.


Ian Thorpe sets the record straight

Ian Thorpe sets the record straight


Palmer accused of yelling at female staff

Palmer accused of yelling at female staff


Bottle deposits scheme is costly

Bottle deposits scheme is costly


Top stories

Australia's highest law officer has declared Gillard above suspicion, writes Andrew Bolt

Nicola Roxon

Nicola Roxon. Picture: Darren Mcnamara Source: The Australian

Lee Rhiannon

NSW Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon. Picture: Nikki Short Source: The Australian

< Prev

 of 2

Next >

AUSTRALIA'S top lawgiver has kindly cleared the Prime Minister of any crookedness in helping create a "slush fund" used to steal workers' money.



As Attorney-General Nicola Roxon put it: "I'm totally satisfied that Julia (Gillard) had not done anything improper or anything unlawful."

And being young and naive, I am totally satisfied with the say-so of a Roxon who, like half a dozen Government figures, was involved in the fallout of this scandal in the 1990s and possibly knows more than she's letting on.

Hmm. Labor sure has a tiny gene pool when so many ministers and faction bosses have personal involvement in a scandal that started with what we're told was totally proper legal work by a solicitor and partner of Slater & Gordon, as Julia Gillard then was.

Some might say such a tight clique breeds a culture of cover-up.

But surely that sells the Attorney-General short?

After all, Ms Roxon is famous for her impartiality ever since she even-handedly helped sleazy Speaker Peter Slipper to slime a staffer who'd accused this upstanding abuser of expenses of being a sexual harasser as well.

Now Ms Roxon is showing that even-handedness by clearing Ms Gillard of doing anything woofy when she helped her then boyfriend, Australian Workers Union boss Bruce Wilson, create a personal "slush fund". It was an incorporated association they called the Australian Workers Union Workplace Reform Association, but it wasn't actually the union's.

And it wasn't just for workplace reform.

It was essentially Mr Wilson's and it was for him.

Ms Roxon professes to be totally satisfied Ms Gillard acted properly even when she failed to go to the police on learning Mr Wilson actually used the fund to steal $400,000, some of which he spent on buying himself a house  again with Ms Gillard's help. (Ms Gillard says she didn't know the money was stolen.)

And the $5000 of Mr Wilson's cash reportedly dropped into Ms Gillard's account? Also no problem, says Ms Roxon.

Attorneys-General don't lightly clear people of impropriety, so I'm sure that Ms Roxon under-took extensive investigations before clearing the Prime Minister. But what investigations exactly?

I'm sure her inquiry wouldn't have been hard.

Ms Roxon could have started simply by consulting her own diary.

You see, when Slater & Gordon, whose clients included the AWU, discovered what Ms Gillard had done, it parted company with her and had its AWU account moved to rival firm Maurice Blackburn. One of Maurice Blackburn's solicitors was the young Ms Roxon, who reportedly went through some files to hand over documents to an investigation into the scams.

Other Labor MPs could have told Ms Roxon more.

Backbencher Robert McClelland, the former Attorney-General, was the solicitor who helped AWU national secretary Ian Cambridge try to recover the money stolen by Mr Wilson, which included calling for a royal commission. He is said to be privately critical of Ms Gillard's role and could have told Ms Roxon why.

Workplace Minister Bill Shorten could also help Ms Roxon. An AWU official in 1996, he was copied in on a letter from a colleague to ACTU secretary Bill Kelty warning if a royal commission was not headed off, "we are all history".

Mr Shorten later took over the AWU branch that Mr Wilson had led.

Resources Minister Martin Ferguson was president of the ACTU at the time Mr Kelty was reported by AWU figures to be "supportive" of attempts to stop a royal commission.

 He is believed to disapprove of how the scandal was resolved, or not.

Agriculture Minister Joe Ludwig was another employee of the AWU. In 1996 he was alerted by a company which had paid $29,000 into Mr Wilson's slush fund, thinking it was legitimate, and was upset when asked to call it a donation. Mr Ludwig's father, Bill Ludwig, was then, and is now, AWU federal president, and a key leader of the faction keeping Ms Gillard in power.

First Mr Wilson's patron, he later fought to get back the stolen money.

Backbencher Chris Hayes, chairman of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Law Enforcement, was an AWU assistant national secretary who counter-signed redundancy cheques to get rid of Mr Wilson and his bagman, Ralph Blewitt. Senator David Feeney was in 1995 the union official who asked Ms Gillard to explain why a builder wanted AWU payment for work done on her house.

Ms Gillard told Slater & Gordon partners in a formal interview she spoke to Mr Feeney about her renovation and he relayed her reassurances to the man who ousted her boyfriend as the AWU's Victorian secretary, Bob Smith, later President of Victoria's Legislative Council. Astonishing, how many Labor MPs know something of a scandal about which Ms Roxon now claims she has no concern  not about Ms Gillard's role, anyway.

Some are much less forgiving than Ms Roxon, but what would they know?

Australia's highest law officer has declared Ms Gillard above any suspicion, and Ms Roxon would tell us true, right?


Senator needs rocket rethink 

COULD Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon explain those hundreds of rockets being fired at Israel from Gaza?

You see, Ms Rhiannon even this week was still claiming Gaza was "the world's biggest outdoor prison and ... has been under blockade for quite some time".

Blockaded by Israel, that is, which Ms Rhiannon, right, wants to boycott "as a way to promoting Palestinian human rights".

But about that blockade, Senator: From where came the nearly 2000 rockets fired from the Hamas-controlled territory into Israel since January, including some big enough to hit Jerusalem and Tel Aviv?


Perhaps that blockade isn't as strict as you claim  and cer-tainly not along Gaza's border with Egypt, now controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood.

Next question: If Gaza is the "world's biggest outdoor prison" strangled by a blockade so severe that Palestinians are left, as activists such as Professor Juan Cole claim, short of food and medicine, why would Hamas smuggle in rockets instead? Strange priorities, especially when rockets are not weapons of self-defence but of offence. Of terror. Which, of course, is the stock in trade of Hamas, pledged to Israel's destruction.

Next question about that blockade you oppose, Senator: Can you now understand why Israel, while allowing in food, medicine and other goods, does try to stop imports to Gaza of weapons and material to build them?

If it did not, would there be more rockets or fewer?

More dying or less?

Last question: If Hamas put as much effort into developing Gaza as it does into smuggling rockets, wouldn't its people be safer, richer and more trusted by its neighbours? More likely to make peace?

Look at those rockets, Senator, and ask yourself if you've become a dupe of terrorists, rather than a voice for human rights.

Have your say

Skip to:
Read comments
Add comments

Add your comment on this story

Comments Form

1200 characters left

Your details
Post Options