Once is Happenstance …

In encounters between secret agents of Her Majesty’s government and chrysophilist operatives of SMERSH, once is happenstance and twice is coincidence, but thrice is enemy action.
In the case of the mysterious disappearance of files which just happen to relate to various past wrongdoings of the present Australian prime minister (and the continuing concealment thereof), one disappearance could be an unfortunate happenstance and a second may just be a strange coincidence; a third vanishing of potentially incriminating documents, however, suggests a pattern of deliberate criminality, and a fourth dematerialisation indicates a conspiracy of mischievous malfeasance.

See “The missing Australian Industrial Relations Court files”, by Michael Smith, and Missing files add to opposition ire”, by Mark Baker:

Federal Court officials confirmed on Friday that key documents filed with the Queensland Industrial Court registry in 1995 by former AWU national president Bill Ludwig could not be found.
Mr [Harry] Nowicki, who has been privately researching the scandal, said he had also confirmed the disappearance of documents relating to a subsequent legal action initiated by Mr Cambridge after the discovery of the rorting of the Workplace Reform Association, from which police later confirmed more than $400,000 was stolen.
He said a senior official at the Federal Court registry in Sydney had confirmed to him the entire file for the Cambridge case – coded NI2082 – was missing. Mr Nowicki said he believed the Queensland Federal Court records may have disappeared in transit from Melbourne, where he was given access to some of the material earlier this year.  “This is very irregular conduct … I have never come across anything like this,” he said.

See also a transcript of Chris Kenny’s interview with Julie Bishop, and “AWU scandal – fourth file goes missing from court archives”, by Andrew Bolt. 

UPDATE I:   hear Alan Jones, of 2GB, discuss the Gillard-gate story with Chris Kenny and, on a not irrelevant note, hear Chris Smith discuss the corruption in the union movement with Industrial Relations Expert, Grace Collier.

UPDATE II (20 November):  “Files?  Files!  We aint got no files.  Oh, those files.”  It seems that some files can be found after all—in a carton labelled “spare bits of asbestos”, inside an old photocopier, under some superfluous curtain samples, behind a broken broom cupboard, in the basement.  Mark Baker—would that the mainly supine mainstream media contained far more journalists of his and Hedley Thomas’s calibre!—continues to investigate:

Federal Court officials have found several missing files at the centre of the Australian Workers Union slush-fund scandal – but confirmed that others have disappeared.
Deputy Opposition Leader Julie Bishop had urged police intervention unless Queensland court records relating to a bid in the mid-1990s to recover money from the disgraced former boyfriend of Prime Minister Julia Gillard and his associates were quickly found.
A Federal Court spokesman said an exhaustive search had discovered the missing Queensland files in the court’s Victorian registry in Melbourne on Monday.
But he confirmed that a box of records was still missing from the court’s NSW registry, including a crucial affidavit and documents assembled by AWU whistleblower and now Fair Work Australia commissioner Ian Cambridge.

UPDATE III (21 November):  the ABC, though belatedly covering the story of the PM’s shonky past, still can’t get facts straight.  Tonight, on “7.30”, for instance, Leigh Sales said:

In August, the prime minister called a press conference, and answered every question put to her about the [AWU or Gillard-gate] affair, in the hope it would bring the issue to an end; and it did, but not for long.

No, the issue was not brought to an end—except in the partisan hopes and fancies of her ignorant and ill-prepared pathics within the mainstream media.  (In fairness, journalists at that press conference were expecting to hear and respond, in the words of the PM, to “an announcement arising from Angus Houston’s report into asylum seeker and refugee issues”.)  At that conference, among other duplicities, the PM said, “The Australian newspaper today asserted that I created a trust fund.  That is wholly untrue and seriously defamatory.”*
No, someone (or an automated spell-checker, perhaps) made a minor mistake in terming what the PM herself called a “slush fund” a “trust fund”.  Only an utterly inept but deperate lawyer would consider such a simple error “highly defamatory”.  No-one in the inept, and largely apathetic, agagic media flock questioned the PM’s ridiculous assessment. 
Ineptitude, however, according to her own accounts, is a striking feature of the PM’s former legal employment.

*  see updates VIII and IX of “Τετέλεσται”.

UPDATE IV (22 November):  see, in the AFR, “Shorten: PM slush fund inappropriate”, by Mark Skulley and Natalie Gerritsen:

Ms Gillard did some paperwork to help establish the AWU Workplace Reform Association in 1992.  She also witnessed a power of attorney document that allowed Mr Wilson to buy and sell a property in inner-city Melbourne on behalf of Mr Blewitt.

That’s not quite right; here’s a corrected version:

Ms Gillard did the paperwork to establish the shonky AWU Workplace Reform Association in 1992.  She also signed an irregular “specific power of attorney” affirming that she was a witness thereof, without actually being a witness, which seemingly allowed Slater & Gordon to help Mr Wilson buy and sell a property in inner-city Melbourne in the name of Mr Blewitt. 

UPDATE V (22 November):  the mainstream media in Australia, not over-burdened with originality, collegially decide that Mr. Ralph Blewitt, a self-confessed union bagman, is “a self-confessed fraudster”:
Tony Jones, on “Lateline”, interviewing Hon. Bill Shorten:

As you know, Blewitt is a self-confessed fraudster …

Mark Latham, at Crikey:

In this allegation, Bolt is relying entirely on the word of Ralph Blewitt, a self-confessed fraudster  …

Mark Skulley and Natalie Gerritsen, in the AFR:

Mr Blewitt, a self-confessed fraudster, returned from Malaysia yesterday …

UPDATE VI (22 November):  hear Ben Fordham speak with Ralph Blewitt on 2GB.

UPDATE VII (22 November):  at Michael Smith News, “Ralph Blewitt responds directly to the Prime Minister’s statement”.  There can be no doubt now, surely, that Hon. Julia Gillard, the Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Australia, is a duplicitous, devious, willful liar.

UPDATE VIII (22 November):  the Prime Minister, of course, is not the only liar in her government; Larry Pickering, in “Roxon up to Her Ample Thighs AWU Fraud”, helpfully points to others:

Last night on the ABC, Bill Shorten lied.  Not only his body language, but documented evidence, confirms he lied and he is not very good at it.
He claims he, “wasn’t working for the AWU” when the Gillard/Wilson scandal broke.  That’s lie number one.  He was.  At that time he was paid as an AWU organiser.
He claims he didn’t know about this scam.  Lie number two.  He was instrumental in trying to cover it up.
Shorten was living with Nicola Roxon at the time.  She was working at Maurice Blackburn lawyers.  Shorten was completing his articles at the same office.  Let’s assume there was no pillow talk regarding something as momentously illegal as this.  Unlikely I know, but let’s assume that for the sake of the dear Ms Roxon.
Gillard claimed she did not report the fraud to the police because it was “already under investigation”.  Not true.  After the fraud was discovered it wasn’t until the following year that it was reported to the police.
Gillard also claims she did not open a file on the matter.  Not true.  She herself says a file was somewhere in her office but became “mislaid”.
Gillard was instrumental in filing a defamation writ in the Supreme Court effectively gagging those in the union who were trying to disclose the fraudulent activities.  It is impossible to file a Supreme Court writ without a file having been opened.
Where is this file?  Okay, stay with me here...  Gillard was sacked from Slater & Gordon at the same time as the complicit Bernard Murphy was paid out as an equity partner.
Gillard never worked in law again. Gillard’s file disappeared at the same time Murphy moved to Maurice Blackburn.  Now, I can’t confirm this but I have been told by a senior ex-Maurice Blackburn lawyer that Murphy gave the file to Roxon for safe keeping.
We are unlikely to ever see that file as it almost certainly was destroyed by Roxon when the temperature recently became dangerously hot.
The two people who assisted Gillard at the time were well rewarded by Gillard as PM.  The complicit Murphy was promoted to the Federal Court Bench and the unqualified Roxon to the highest law office in the land as GG.  Make of that what you will.

UPDATE IX (22 November):  some of an interview from tonight’s “7.30”, according to the ABC’s transcript:

LEIGH SALES:  Today you’re releasing an extra section of the transcript of the Gillard interview at Slater & Gordon.  What does it show?
NICK STYANT-BROWNE:  What it shows is that Ms Gillard claimed at the interview in 1995 that the first she heard about the Slater & Gordon loan for the acquisition of the Kerr Street property was around August of that year.  So, her claim is that the first she heard about the fact that the loan for the Kerr Street property was a Slater & Gordon mortgage was not until August of 1995, the transaction of course having taken place in March of 1993.
LEIGH SALES:  OK.  You’ve also released other documents.  One is a fax from the Commonwealth Bank to Julia Gillard.  What, in your opinion, does that show?
NICK STYANT-BROWNE:  Yeah, I haven’t released those documents, Leigh.  Those documents form part of a conveyancing file which are now matters of public record.  So they are from the conveyancing file which Mr Blewitt consented be released and made publicly available.  Now what those documents show is that there is no doubt Ms Gillard knew of the mortgage from Slater & Gordon in March of 1993.  And just to give you some examples, she personally arranged for the mortgage insurance for the Kerr Street property through the Commonwealth Bank and a letter was faxed to her on March 22 of 1993 from the Commonwealth Bank marked for her attention noting that the insurance had been renewed and further advising that the Slater & Gordon mortgage interest was noted on the policy of insurance.
LEIGH SALES:  What do you believe is the significance of the facts compared to the statements that Julia Gillard made in the interview?
NICK STYANT-BROWNE:  Well, it’s a matter for others to make judgments about the credibility of Ms Gillard’s statements.  What I can say is this:  that there is absolutely no doubt that Ms Gillard not only knew of the Slater & Gordon mortgage in March of 1993, but was specifically involved in taking steps to facilitate that mortgage.  Now, that’s a matter of documents; it's not a matter of assertion or hearsay.  Now, you then have a situation where two and a half years later in September of 1995 Ms Gillard is asserting that the first she heard it was a Slater & Gordon mortgage was in August of 1995.  Now, it’s up to others to make the judgment about her credibility.

It’s not just that the Prime Minister lied to her caucus (which is, though impolitic, nothing new) or lied to the press gallery (which, though wrong, is nothing strange) or lied directly to the the people (which, though wicked, is neither new nor strange); she lied to the Parliament and must resign or be sacked.  It’s that simple.  Furthermore, given her many lies, we may fairly question the truthfulness of her claims that she was never a party to what she admitted was a fraudulent enterprise of her leman.

UPDATE X (23 November):  see “Bank letter links PM to house mortgage”, by Mark Baker; see also “The Prime Minister tells lies, she always has, she did to her partners”, by Michael Smith:

I am running a very unsophisticated blog on a laptop and an iPhone.  Just imagine what information about the trustworthiness of Julia Eileen Gillard has been uncovered by the security agencies from countries that Australia deals with.

Indeed; imagine what information about the trustworthiness of Julia Eileen Gillard could have been uncovered by our well-staffed ABC if the ABC cared a jot about investigating politicians whom the collective adores so giddily.

UPDATE XI (23 November):  see “Gillard, Wilson Stole Millions... So Why a Mortgage?”, wherein Larry Pickering claims that, whilst “media interest surrounds a piddling amount of $400,000”, Bruce Wilson, abetted by Julia Gillard, misappropriated much more:

Known amounts that have been extorted from construction companies including Thiess, who knew of and were complicit in the corruption, amount to over $2 million (God knows how much that is in today’s money).  The total figure is almost certainly higher than $2 million because we have only been able to scratch the surface.

UPDATE XII (23 November):  hear 4BC’s Greg Cary discuss the scandal with Michael Smith.

UPDATE XIII (24 November):  in “Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s former boyfriend Bruce Wilson breaks his silence”, Steve Lewis relates that a lying con-man, whilst exculpating his former girlfriend (who helped him commit fraud), denounces another associate (whom he convinced to take part in that fraud) as untrustworthy:

Julia Gillard’s former lover Bruce Wilson has declared the Prime Minister knew nothing of about a 1990s union fraud scandal.
Breaking his silence for the first time, the former Australian Workers Union boss said the PM “knew absolutely, categorically nothing” about the fraud.

Well, that should be enough for all of us.

Mr Wilson, who had a four-year relationship with Ms Gillard, said: “They can go on a witch-hunt for as long as they like, and they will find nothing that will do her (Gillard) any harm.
“It’s just a waste of time.  They will find nothing.
“(She) knew absolutely, categorically nothing,” he told the Sunday Herald Sun by phone from his NSW Central Coast home.
His revelations will help ease pressure on Ms Gillard, who has been under intense scrutiny about her alleged involvement in a union “slush fund” that was used to buy a Melbourne property where Mr Wilson, her then boyfriend, lived.

Why should Wilson’s revelations—or, in other words, unsupported but partisan claims—ease pressure on our duplicitous PM?  Even if Julia Gillard—who was paid to represent the AWU at the time but preferred to act for Wilson for free instead—knew nothing, she ought to have known that her leman could not be buying another house, cheating on his wife, shewing Gillard the high life and generally living large only on his salary from the AWU.  Also, if Gillard did no wrong, there’d be no need for her subsequent corrupt concealment of her past doings and her continuing lies thereof.

UPDATE XIV (24 November):  see “Dear Prime Minister. You Are a Liar”, by Michael Smith.

UPDATE XV (25 November):

UPDATE XVI (29 November):  see “Proof: PM told firm what she won’t tell parliament”, by Hedley Thomas:

Julia Gillard admitted during a secret internal probe to writing to a government department to help overcome its objections to the creation of an association for her then boyfriend and client, union official Bruce Wilson.

The revelation, contained in a document released today after 17 years, comes after days of stonewalling by the Prime Minister, including in parliament, on the question of whether she had personally vouched for the Australian Workers Union Workplace Reform Association.

The document, a record of interview between Ms Gillard and her law firm, Slater & Gordon, in September 1995, reveals the association was initially regarded as ineligible because of its “trade union” status.

Ms Gillard overcame the obstacle by writing to the Commissioner for Corporate Affairs in Western Australia in 1992 and arguing that the decision to bar it should be reversed.

Ms Gillard also wrote the association’s rules, which emphasised worker safety but made no mention of its true purpose of funding the elections of union officials.

The document reveals she “cut and pasted” some of the rules from her earlier personal work incorporating the controversial Socialist Forum, which she helped found at Melbourne University in the 1980s.  […]

In parliament this week, Ms Gillard has refused to answer repeated questioning from Deputy Opposition Leader Julie Bishop on whether she wrote to the West Australian authority to vouch for “the bona fides of the AWU Workplace Reform Association”.

On Monday, she told parliament:  “The claim that the Deputy Leader of the Opposition has now made is a claim that appeared in The Age …  The correspondence she refers to has never been produced, so the claim has been made but no correspondence has ever been produced.”

Yesterday she told parliament she had “dealt with these matters fully”.  […]

Later she added:  “Once again, we are in a situation where the Deputy Leader of the Opposition is asserting things she has got no sources for, except she read them somewhere.”

Last night, a spokesman for the Prime Minister said she had “no recollection of receiving or sending the claimed correspondence in this matter”.

See also “Document contradicts Gillard fund claims”, by Mark Baker:

Prime Minister Julia Gillard enabled the incorporation of a union slush fund from which her boyfriend later stole hundreds of thousands of dollars by formally denying to authorities that it was a trade union organisation.

A newly released document confirms that a letter Ms Gillard wrote to the WA Corporate Affairs Commission in mid-1992 rejected the commission’s assertion that the Australian Workplace Reform Association was ineligible for incorporation because of its union links. The document also confirms that Ms Gillard, then a salaried partner with Slater & Gordon, drafted the rules for the association – without opening a formal file, without consulting the senior partners and without taking advice from expert lawyers within the firm.

The revelations contradict Ms Gillard’s claims at media conferences and in Parliament that she played a limited role in the formation of the association, from which Mr Wilson and his crony, Ralph Blewitt, later misappropriated more than $400,000.

Asked by Deputy Opposition Leader Julie Bishop on Monday whether she had written vouching for the bona fides of the association, Ms Gillard told Parliament:  “The claim has been made but no correspondence has ever been produced.”

From “Young Gillard answers the boss”, in The Australian, an “extract from the transcript of a meeting between Slater & Gordon senior partner Peter Gordon, general manager Geoff Shaw and salaried partner Julia Gillard on September 11, 1995”:

PETER GORDON:  All right, well, let’s talk about the AWU Workplace Reform Association Account.  That account, as you’ve said, is an account which was the account belonging to an incorporated association by the same name which was incorporated by Slater & Gordon at (Bruce) Wilson’s, on Wilson’s instructions following your advice to him which you described earlier.
JULIA GILLARD:  That’s right.
PETER GORDON:  And that happened in or about mid-1992.
JULIA GILLARD:  That’s right.
PETER GORDON:  And last Monday I think you gave to Paul Mulvaney a follow-up which demonstrates that Slater & Gordon had drafted model rules for, for that, had submitted those rules to the relevant Western Australian government authority, that there’d been a letter from the authority suggesting that it might be a trade union and therefore ineligible for incorporation under that legislation, and that we had prepared a response submitted on Wilson’s instructions to that authority suggesting that in fact it wasn’t a trade union and arguing the case for its incorporation.  My recollection is that all of that happened in or about mid-1992.  Is that right?
JULIA GILLARD:  I wouldn’t want to be held to the dates without looking at the file, but whatever the dates the file shows are the right dates, so …
PETER GORDON:  Yes.  And to the extent that work was done on that file in relation to that it was done by you?
JULIA GILLARD:  That’s right.
PETER GORDON:  And did you get advice from anyone else in the firm in relation to any of those matters?
JULIA GILLARD:  No I didn’t.  […]
PETER GORDON:  Do you recall whether when it was necessary to argue the case with the, with the relevant Western Australian authority, whether you consulted anyone else in the firm as to what would or would not get, become acceptable or appropriate?
JULIA GILLARD:  I once again don’t recall talking to anybody else in the firm about it.

UPDATE XVII (30 November):  listen to Julie Bishop and Alan Jones discuss the evidence that the PM is a crook; see Larry Pickering’s “We Have a Criminal as Prime Minister... and the Press Gallery Is Quite Comfortable with That”; and see Andrew Bolt’s “How Gillard Manufactured One of the Smears against Her”.