The Prime Minister Is a Liar

We already know that Hon. Julia Gillard, Prime Minister of Australia, is a crooked liar.  Today, St. George’s Day, 2GB’s Ben Fordham publicly confirmed on his radio show that the statement he made in March, when interviewing the PM, that she is being investigated by Victoria Police, for alleged fraud, is true.  Naturally, our mendaciloquent PM denies everything.

Si noscat mendaciloquam, oderit Julia Gillard
et nostram haec ministram illam prima nefaria primam.

(“If she knew our mendacious prime minister
even base Julia Gillard would hate her.”)

Listen to Ben Fordham’s statement on April 23, 2013.

Listen to Ben Fordham’s  interview with Hon. Julia Gillard on 7 March, 2013.

Remember, the PM has already lied in Parliament:

Ms GILLARD (Lalor—Prime Minister) (14:48):  I have in fact dealt with these questions on the public record.  I stand by those truthful statements, and the construction that the Deputy Leader of the Opposition is trying to put on them is not a fair construction.  I refer her to my extensive press conference, where I dealt with all of these issues in a great deal of detail.

Neither she nor her Canberra press lackeys referred to the power of attorney in the transcript which her own office released. By saying she “dealt with these questions on the public record”—specifically, the power of attorney which she “witnessed” as well as the mortgage wherewith it was secured—she willfully misled the House.

UPDATE:  see Michael Smith’s “Deny, Deny, Deny.  True to form and entirely unbelievable”.
Of course, ABC News fails—yet again—to mention this important story.

UPDATE II:  see Grace Collier’s “Diary” in The Spectator of 2 March 2013:

Hedley [Thomas] and I have both written about the ‘AWU scandal’.  Some weeks ago I sent the following question to the PM’s office after speaking with the police:  ‘I am asserting that the PM is a subject of a police enquiry.  I believe the investigation was initiated in response to an allegation made against the PM, specifically that she created a false document … I am wanting to know whether the PM is aware the investigation is into whether this allegation is correct and if so whether she intends to comply.  By comply I mean respond to any police requests for interview that may be made.’  And the PM’s response:  ‘The investigation into this matter has been known for some time.  As the Prime Minister has repeatedly made clear, she was not involved in any wrongdoing.  The investigation is a matter for the police.’
The Prime Minister hasn’t denied my assertion that she is a subject of a police enquiry, nor have the Victorian Police corrected it.  It strikes me as ironic that a Prime Minister whose primary impairment is a lack of trust from the electorate may soon be interviewed by the Fraud Squad over her rôle in a major crime.

UPDATE III:  a song:

She’s a Liar

Have we an obligation to listen to our leaders with respect?
Are honour and integrity virtues we may rightfully expect?
Listen to the PM; there is never any honour to detect:
    she’s a liar.

That woman must equivocate, ever fabricating through each day,
she’s misrepresenting and deceitfully inventing all the way;
misleading, misinforming, the truth is something she will never say:
    she’s a liar.

It aint so complicated that she’s prevaricated to us all;
perfidious, mendacious, duplicitous in matters great and small,
simply put she tells untruth, accordingly we have to make this call:
    she’s a liar.

See also “Unfit to Lead” and “The PM Lied”. 

UPDATE IV:  Andrew Bolt joins in the fun with “Claim: Police investigating Gillard on slush fund”.

UPDATE V:  see “PM denies AWU investigation claims”, by Steve Lewis and Carly Lawrence:

Victorian police are escalating their investigation into the union scandal involving Julia Gillard's former boyfriend, engaging forensic accountants to track hundreds of thousands of dollars in allegedly suspect payments.

As detectives continue to interview key witnesses in the Australian Workers Union slush fund scandal, Ms Gillard yesterday denied claims from a Sydney radio host that she was being investigated by police over the affair.  […]

“The police are interested in comments made by Julia Gillard in the interview with me,” Mr Fordham told his listeners.

Mr Fordham told listeners he knew “for a fact that the Prime Minister is being investigated” by the Victorian police.

But a spokesman for Ms Gillard said the PM has “never been contacted by police and never been asked to provide a statement”.

Well, I imagine that, sometimes, people may be investigated by the police without their being informed, and even without being asked for a statement, until police have completed other investigations and obtained relevant documents.  We need not pay very much attention to any typically equivocatory denial from the PM or anything which her lying lackeys assert.

UPDATE VI (24 April):  shortly after midnight, mirabile dictu, I could find no reference to Fordham’s claim in either the Sydney Morning Herald or The Age.

UPDATE VII:  see “Gillard denies new AWU request”, in The Australian, by Hedley Thomas and Pia Akerman:

A former union employee who has told of depositing $5,000 into Julia Gillard’s bank account at the direction of her allegedly corrupt union boss boyfriend has been asked by Victoria Police to make a formal statement as part of an ongoing fraud investigation.

The request came as the Prime Minister denied allegations made by radio broadcaster 2GB’s Ben Fordham that she was under direct investigation.

Ms Gillard has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in relation to the money.
Fordham said Victoria Police had verified to him that she was being investigated and asked him to make a statement about responses Ms Gillard gave in a March 7 radio interview about her conduct in an alleged fraud involving several hundred thousand dollars in the early 1990s.
The Australian is aware that detectives have questioned more than 12 witnesses since late last year who had direct knowledge of the Australian Workers Union slush fund scandal, the role of Ms Gillard at law firm Slater & Gordon and admissions by former AWU official Ralph Blewitt that he helped perpetrate a major fraud at the union.

UPDATE VIII:  some previous posts:

“Gillard’s End is Nigh” (19 January, 2013);
“Once is Happenstance …” (19 November, 2012);
“One Obvious Wrongdoing is the Misprision” (16 November);

“‘Τετέλεσται’”  (23 August, 2012);
“Yet More on Gillard” (22 August, 2012);
“‘Young and Naïve’ and ‘the Benefit of the Doubt’” (21 August, 2012);
“More on Gillard” (20 August, 2012);

“‘Depart, I Say, and Let Us Have Done with You’” (21 July, 2012);

“The PM’s Distress” (22 June, 2012);

“The PM’s Gag” (10 February, 2012);

“Incredibly Challenging” (10 November, 2011);

“The Loathing of Julia Gillard” (22 September, 2011);
“The National Interest” (20 September, 2011);
“The Elocution of Julia Gillard” (18 September, 2011);
“Principium Exitus” (31 August, 2011);
“Another Story You May Not Read” (includes a Statutory Declaration by Robert Kernohan, 29 August, 2011);
“A Story You May Not Read” (29 August, 2011);

“The PM and the People Agree” (4 July, 2011);
“The Wisdom of Julia Gillard” (at The Friends of CO₂, 26 June, 2011); and
“She’s a Woman” (at Say “Yes’’ to More Taxes, 17 July, 2010).

UPDATE IX (27 April):  see “Who knows PM Julia Gillard is under investigation?”, by Hedley Thomas, in The Australian:

In the days after a heated 2GB radio interview in March, during which Julia Gillard was questioned closely about the AWU slush fund scandal, a detective in Victoria’s Fraud Squad, Ross Mitchell, made a strategic decision.
One answer the Prime Minister gave during a dogged tussle in her interview with Ben Fordham stood out.  Mitchell knew it when he heard it.  The other detectives knew it too.
Although seemingly innocuous to those not involved in the probe, Gillard’s answer was new and pivotal.  It meant police in Melbourne would need a sworn statement from Fordham in Sydney, even though as a journalist he would be expected to subsequently disclose some key facts.
The actions that Mitchell and other police took in seeking further information from Fordham led to him stating in unequivocal terms on his radio show this week something that had been previously cryptically and very carefully inferred—the Prime Minister is under formal Victoria Police investigation as a result of the 18-year-old Australian Workers Union fraud.  Fordham has kept a pledge to police to not publicly reveal more than this.  […]
Neither the Police Commissioner of Victoria, Ken Lay, nor the Prime Minister’s office has sought to dispute any of Fordham’s assertions.  Nor is the PM’s office now suggesting, as it did in March, that the Victoria Police investigation has nothing to do with Gillard.  The reality is that Gillard’s office cannot know the details of the probe.
Lay, who has had the opportunity to correct the record if he decided that Fordham had jumped to a wrong conclusion in naming Gillard, let it stand.  […]
For an alleged fraud being taken seriously since late last year by seasoned detectives, Australians should ask hard questions about why large sections of their media, and particularly the public broadcaster, still baulk at reporting the AWU scandal; downplay the story or, worse, self-censor; ask few or no questions; and even mock journalists who have lost their jobs for pursuing it—Michael Smith and Glenn Milne.
Australia’s best-resourced media outlet, the ABC, has scarcely, if at all, reported the ongoing police investigation this year. Only after Media Watch questioned the ABC’s obvious reticence to look at the AWU story in any meaningful way last year, the 7.30 program belatedly weighed in.  […]
For Mitchell's taskforce, one of the most interesting features of [Ralph] Blewitt’s story is that he has told it in the knowledge that he faces going to prison. Having admitted to police an incriminating role in what he calls a fraud, Blewitt can be prosecuted and convicted. There has been no deal.
One of the planks of Blewitt’s story, which 2GB’s Fordham latched on to in his interview with the Prime Minister in March, concerns a “power of attorney” document bearing Gillar’'s signature as the official witness.  According to Blewitt, it was a false document.
Blewitt has repeatedly said the “power of attorney” was not worth the paper on which it was written.  The document permitted Wilson to buy the Fitzroy terrace house (in Blewitt's name) at auction.  Blewitt, who was living in Perth at the time, claims it is bogus—that Gillard could not have “witnessed” it as they were thousands of kilometres apart at the time.
In previous rejections of Blewitt's claims about this document, the Prime Minister insisted she always witnessed such documents properly as a solicitor.  But Fordham tells Inquirer that all of Gillard’s previous answers seemed to avoid declaring outright that she and Blewitt were in the same room when the power of attorney was witnessed.
“I wanted a straight answer from the PM on that simple question when I interviewed her in March and I wasn’t going to let it go,” he said.
Gillard finally confirmed [i.e., asserted] to Fordham that she and Blewitt were in the room when the document was signed. It is an assertion that could only be [proven] wrong if Victoria Police have evidence placing them on opposite sides of Australia.

UPDATE X (27 April):  the supposed “specific power of attorney” (note the lack of a second witness):

A “specific power of attorney” differs from an “enduring power of attorney” but, nonetheless, see the Western Australian Office of the Public Advocate’s helpful advice on an “Enduring Power of Attorney”; the “Enduring Power of Attorney Information Kit” (p. 15) suggests:

When you sign your enduring power of attorney form, your signature must be witnessed by two people.

Both witnesses must:

   • be present when you sign the form

   • be 18 years of age or older

   • have full legal capacity

At least one of your witnesses must be a person authorised to witness statutory declarations under the Oaths, Affidavits and Statutory Declarations Act 2005 (see Appendix B).  You may choose to have two authorised witnesses, but this is not essential.

The person who is not an authorised witness must not be a party to the enduring power of attorney (i.e. a witness cannot be a sole, joint or substitute attorney or a person involved in a marksman or readover clause in the enduring power of attorney).

It is however also recommended that the authorised witness is not a party to the enduring power of attorney, and can be seen as an independent witness.

I doubt that many reasonable people, knowing of Julia Gillard’s relationship with Bruce Wilson, would contend that she was “an independent witness”.
Victoria also requires two witnesses; see the Victorian Office of the Public Advocate’s helpful advice in “Take Control—A kit for making powers of attorney and guardianship” (p. 41):

The two witnesses must sign the ‘Certificate of witnesses’.  You cannot be a witness and neither can your attorney.  At least one of the witnesses must be someone who is not related to you or the person(s) you appoint as your attorney(s).  One of the witnesses must be authorised by law to witness the signing of statutory declarations.

When Ben Fordham asked the PM whether she were in the same room as Mr. Blewitt when she supposedly witnessed the “specific power of attorney”, she replied:  

I properly witness documents as a lawyer.  So you can believe Mr Blewitt or you can believe me, Ben.  I’m not overly fussed what you conclude, but I witnessed documents properly as a lawyer.  […]
I’ve witnessed documents properly as a lawyer.  […]
I don’t remember each document, but I witnessed documents properly.  […] 
I witness documents properly.  […] 
I witness documents properly.  […] 
my practice as a lawyer was to witness documents properly.

I should hope that a qualified solicitor, in order to witness a document properly, would ascertain that the said document was drafted with a reasonable level of competence and that the proper number of suitable witnesses were present.
Section 106 of the Victorian Instruments Act (1958), which Julia Gillard, who was practising as a solicitor in Victoria, should have known, is:

Execution of powers of attorney

(1)  An instrument creating a power of attorney may be executed by, or by direction and in the presence of, the donor of the power.
(2)  Where such an instrument is executed by a person by direction and in the presence of the donor of the power, two other persons shall be present as witnesses and shall attest the instrument.

UPDATE X (29 April):  see Michael Smith on “The Power of Attorney, the document that Julia Gillard says she witnessed properly”.

UPDATE XI (2 May):  

A Vision

I dreamed our prime deceiver,
arrested by “the man”;
protested, “I’m your leader!”
as they put her in the van.

She feigned a stout denial,
and claimed she was naïve;
the jury at her trial,
though, ignored her make-believe.

Once in gaol she might spend years
considering her fall;
may her shame—at last!—and tears
be a lesson for us all. 


The Latest Scheme

Accounts aren’t robust;
Gillard says new taxes could
stop things going bust.

In her greedy lust
for pelf, she feigns some care, but
can’t hide her disgust

for crippled kids thrust
near her.  Remember:  all her
pledges are as dust.

People surely must
consider how well Gillard
last set up a trust.

UPDATE XII (10 May):  a reminder of the PM’s supposed position on telling the truth when she was in opposition; on October 5, 2005, Julia Gillard said in the House of Representatives:

The Labor Party is the party of truth-telling. When we go out into the electorate and make promises, do you know what we would do in government?  We would keep them.

When we say them, we mean them.  That is the difference between [the then Coalition Government] and us.  If I were Minister for Health it would be my duty to implement lock, stock and barrel—word for word—exactly what we had promised in the election campaign.

Ha!


UPDATE XIII (16 May):

Sunt lacrimae rerum

Introducing a
new Bill, Julia Gillard
chokes up, weeps and cries

“Disabled people
will be supported quite soon!”
As ever, she lies:

in a few weeks, a
small trial will commence; the
main scheme will take years

to begin.  Gillard
has, for many, caused much pain
without any tears.

UPDATE XIV (17 June):  see “Victoria Police seize files on AWU”, by Hedley Thomas of The Australian:

Police from the Victorian Fraud Squad have seized boxes of legal documents from Julia Gillard’s former employer, Slater & Gordon lawyers, as part of an ongoing probe into the AWU slush fund scandal.
The documents were removed from the firm’s Melbourne offices after the execution of a search warrant and co-operation between the firm and detectives, sources told The Australian yesterday.
Fraud Squad detectives want to examine all legal files related to controversial legal work done by Ms Gillard and the firm for her then boyfriend, Bruce Wilson, the allegedly corrupt Australian Workers Union senior official, and his union sidekick, Ralph Blewitt, in the 1990s.  […]
Mr Wilson and Ms Gillard, whose relationship ended [according to her] over the AWU scandal in 1995, have repeatedly and strenuously denied any wrongdoing, and accused Mr Blewitt of being unreliable and a liar.
It is understood that while Mr Blewitt wants police to examine all AWU-related legal documents held by Slater & Gordon, Mr Wilson will seek to prevent police from examining the files that are relevant to him.  […]
Victoria Police, which has had a taskforce of detectives working on the AWU investigation since late 2012, have repeatedly declined to comment on their most sensitive probe.  Police last month sought documents from the archives of the AWU’s West Australian and Victorian branches, in which Mr Wilson and Mr Blewitt worked in the 1990s during the alleged fraud.
The legal work done at Slater & Gordon for the two men includes the Prime Minister’s role in helping Mr Wilson establish the AWU Workplace Reform Association.
Ms Gillard says she provided legal advice to help set up the AWU Workplace Reform Association, which Mr Wilson later used to carry out the alleged fraud.  She later described the association as a “slush fund” for the re-election of union officials, but said she had no knowledge of its operations.
The slush fund was used by Mr Wilson and Mr Blewitt to bill building company, Thiess, for hundreds of thousands of dollars for work that was not performed.
The union was not aware of the existence of the slush fund.  Slater & Gordon was the law firm for the AWU at the time.
Money was withdrawn from the slush fund to purchase a $230,000 Fitzroy terrace house in Mr Blewitt’s name at a 1993 auction Ms Gillard attended with Mr Wilson, who subsequently lived in the property.  Slater & Gordon handled the conveyancing and helped provide finance.

UPDATE XV (18 June):  see “Police seek approval to use documents”, by Mark Baker of The Age:

Victoria Police will seek to use documents taken from prominent law firm Slater & Gordon in framing potential criminal charges over the Australian Workers Union slush fund scandal.
Fraud squad detectives are expected to appear before a Melbourne magistrate within two weeks to obtain approval to use documents seized under warrant last month from the firm.  […]
The investigation focuses on the 1993 purchase of a Fitzroy house involving some of the hundreds of thousands of dollars allegedly misappropriated from the AWU Workplace Reform Association by former senior AWU official Bruce Wilson, who was then the boyfriend of Prime Minister Julia Gillard.
Ms Gillard, then a partner at Slater & Gordon, gave legal advice in relation to establishing the association—ostensibly for promoting work safety and training—which she later confirmed to be a “slush fund” to bankroll union elections.
She later created a power of attorney to enable Mr Wilson to buy the property in Kerr Street, Fitzroy, in the name of union crony Ralph Blewitt.
Mr Blewitt has confirmed in a statement to police that he was involved in fraud but both Ms Gillard and Mr Wilson have vehemently denied any illegal or improper conduct.
Detectives are believed to have removed two boxes of documents from the La Trobe Street head offices of Slater & Gordon, including one labelled “Wilson”.  […]
Mr Blewitt, who says he did not sign the Wilson power of attorney until after the property was purchased and that he never benefited from the deal, has already publicly waived client privilege over his dealings with Slater & Gordon.  […]
A team involving as many as 12 detectives has worked on the AWU investigation since late last year.
It is believed they have interviewed more than 60 people including former employees of Slater & Gordon who have provided important leads.
Sources said it was unlikely any charges would be laid before the election, but this was due to the complexity of the investigation rather than any desire to avoid embarrassing the government.

UPDATE XVI (13 June, 2014):  at the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption, Bruce Wilson claimed that Ralph Blewitt did indeed sign the supposed Specific Power of Attorney on 4 February, 1993:

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”.