A Story You May Not Read

“Young and Naïve”

A paper today
bravely retracted a piece—
it was overawed

by lawyers—alleging
that Gillard’s moral sense
was like her arse: broad

and far from pretty.
Now you can’t read how Gillard
had assisted fraud. 


A Pattern?

One union leader
living large whilst his members
struggle?  That’s not news.

A prime minister
who—perhaps—had aided scams?
That we must excuse:

the poor naïve lass,
an industrial lawyer,
just could not refuse

another boyfriend
with working class credentials
and a lust to choose

any perquisite
whereon he set his greedy
eyes by ‘right’ or ruse.

See “Learned Friends, Baffled Readers”, by Prof. Bunyip, and “What’s Williamson so scared of?”, by Andrew Bolt, quoting Glenn Milne:

Gillard, then in her early 30s, was a lawyer with Melbourne-based Labor firm Slater & Gordon.  At the time of the fraud she acted for the AWU.  She met [former boyfriend and con-man, Bruce] Wilson, then the West Australian AWU secretary, while representing the union in the Industrial Relations Commission.  Wilson later moved to Melbourne to become Victorian secretary of the union.
“These matters happened between 12 and 15 years ago,” Gillard told me.   “I was young and naive.  I was in a relationship, which I ended, and obviously it was all very distressing.  I am by no means the first person to find out that someone close turns out to be different to what you had believed them to be.  It’s an ordinary human error.

Also of some relevance is “The Wisdom of Julia Gillard”, at The Friends of Carbon Dioxide, as well as “The Leader Has My Full Support”.

Remember:  listen  to “What Shall We Do with the Missing Data?”, by Mann and Jones et Al., here.

UPDATE I:  the above-mentioned article by Andrew Bolt is no longer available, nor is the article by Glenn Milne which he quoted; in the public interest, however, I provide an unauthorised, slightly edited in order to be absolutely non-defamatory, version of the latter: “Another Story You May Not Read”.

UPDATE II (30 August):  see the Right Side’s “The Stench of the Thomson Affair”, wherein John Citizen assesses that our widdiful, pitiful PM is “trapped in the middle of nowhere and slowly being buried under a giant, steaming pile of foamy raw sewage.”

UPDATE III (30 August):  another person now claiming the “young and naïve” defence, according to his own words on the ABC’s sympathetically supportive, exculpatory “Australian Story”, is the acclaimed (though barely literate) author David Hicks.  Hicks and Gillard—what a pair.

UPDATE IV (30 August):  as the PM nears her fiftieth birthday, she finally begins to shew a little fellow-feeling for the ordinary Australians whom she and her Government are bent on ruining: 

“I do really wonder what happens to an Australian, perhaps someone who lives in the Illawarra or one of the suburbs of our great cities who for whatever reason is caught up in a news story and has a false allegation made about them and no one’s bothered to contact them about it either.
“How do they actually get it fixed given they’re not in the same position as me to make calls to the editor of The Australian newspaper?”

UPDATE V (31 August):  Andrew Bolt, after his ephemeral absence from political commentary, returns to his posts.  See “Principio Exitus”—the Beginning of the End.

UPDATE VI (31 August):  see Shane Dowling’s take at Kangaroo Court of Australia.

UPDATE VII (1 Sepember):  see TWAKI’s “Now illegal to criticise the government”: 

Gillard who claims as a lawyer she was too naïve to understand that setting up false accounts for her boyfriend to defraud a union whilst she lived with him (in the house paid for with defrauded funds) is now not naïve enough to threaten legal and political action against media outlets who scrutinise her past.  And naïvety seems a strange character trait of anyone who who in their mid 30s has worked in law for years and at the time held a responsible legal position that would require anything but naïvety.  It would be reasonable to think that such a person would be both well informed as to legal actions and consequences, particularly in the setting up of accounts.  Gillard would want us to think otherwise.  The naïve thing would be to not question why when over a million dollars of union funds went missing no one was prosecuted.  It would also appear there are a lot more questions to this matter than answers given.

 UPDATE VIII (4 September):   Bill Leak in The Australian:

UPDATE IX (19 September):  see “The lies and deception of Media Watch and host Jonathan Holmes in defence of Julia Gillard”, by Shane Dowling, at Kangaroo Court of Australia. 

UPDATE X (21 July, 2012):  see ‘“Depart, I say, and Let Us Have Done with You”’.