A Penultimate Post on the Previous Premier

Good Riddance to a Bad PM

She ruled three years, at such great cost,
but sycophants regret she lost
to Rudd (who took his destined place
by putting on his umble face).
Apologetic lackeys yell,
“She’s liked by those who know her well,”* 
forgetting her hypocrisy,
inferring much misogyny,
they shriek that she was warm and wise—
ignoring all her wicked lies.
So, Gillard told her henchmen, “Right,
we must continue Labor’s fight!”
To caucus colleagues she said, “Stay!”
as then she swiftly ran away.
We’ll say no more until that time
when she’s indicted for some crime.

*  whereas, for Rudd, most folk adore
    him rather less when he’s known more.

UPDATE I (27 August):  from reading “Police ordered to return sealed documents seized during AWU probe”, by Shannon Deery, we might conclude that the firm of Slater & Gordon—which less charitable critics might denominate Australia’s top outfit of immoral, lucripetous ambulance-chasers—is as mired in corruption as its former clients:

Police have been banned from inspecting a series of documents seized during an investigation into the AWU slush fund scandal involving former [corrupt] Prime Minister Julia Gillard.
A judge today ordered eight documents seized by Victoria Police during the fraud investigation to be returned to law firm Slater & Gordon.
The documents were seized in May and have remained in a sealed envelope and held by the Supreme Court.  They must be returned within seven days.
Lawyers for Slater & Gordon successfully claimed legal privilege over the documents seized from its office.
Phil Corbett, SC, for the firm, said the documents related to legal advice acquired by the firm.  The application, before Justice John Digby, was not opposed by police.
But lawyers for Detective Sergeant Ross Mitchell asked the court to examine the documents to ensure they fell under legal privilege laws.
The police probe into the alleged fraud examines Ms Gillard's relationship with former AWU secretary Bruce Wilson.
The investigation plagued Ms Gillard’s final months as prime minister due to attacks on her integrity over her involvement in providing legal advice to Mr Wilson to help set up a “slush fund”.
Then a lawyer at Slater & Gordon, Ms Gillard set up the fund in 1992 for her then boyfriend.  […]
Mr Wilson and his one-time deputy, Ralph Blewitt, are alleged to have misappropriated hundreds of thousands of dollars in unauthorised accounts.
They have been accused of setting up the slush fund, which was used to siphon $400,000 from a building firm [among other malfeasances].
Ms Gillard lost her job with the firm after her role in helping establish the fund was discovered.
Mr Wilson is under investigation over allegations he was behind a series of other unauthorised funds.
Both Ms Gillard and Mr Wilson have consistently denied any wrongdoing in relation to the scandal.
Mr Wilson was represented at yesterday’s hearing.

The wicked sharks of Slater & Gordon have consistently refused to help the police because, we may reasonably infer, Julia Gillard was not the only shady, incompetent lawyer within that firm and, perhaps, because she was not the only lawyer who was party to the fraud which she assisted her former leman to commit.

UPDATE II (17 September):  see “Tim Mathieson’s car use cost Julia Gillard $4000”, by Hedley Thomas:

Julia Gillard wrote a personal cheque for $4243 to the Department of Finance because her partner, Tim Mathieson, had misused her taxpayer-funded car to drive around Victoria selling shampoo and other haircare products in breach of parliamentary rules.
Documents released to The Australian under Freedom of Information laws yesterday show that Ms Gillard made the payment on March 9, 2007, as deputy leader of the opposition because of concern over a breach of rules forbidding the use of the car for commercial purposes.  The documents were provided yesterday after a 10-month battle by the former prime minister and her office to prevent the Department of Finance from following through on its decision to release the material.
The $4,243 repayment by Ms Gillard indicates her office estimated that Mr Mathieson had driven several thousand kilometres while pursuing his commercial interests in the private-plated car, which was wholly funded by the commonwealth.  […]
The misuse of Ms Gillard’s parliamentary entitlement was not known until a whistleblower alerted The Australian late last year to Mr Mathieson’s heavy use of the car when he was a PPS Hairwear salesman of hair products shortly after their relationship began.
One of four documents released yesterday is the March 2007 letter written by Ms Gillard’s then chief of staff to the entitlements manager of the Department of Finance, and a copy of Ms Gillard’s personal cheque.
The letter states: “Following the election of Julia Gillard as deputy leader of the opposition and my subsequent appointment as chief of staff, Ms Gillard asked me to undertake a comprehensive check of her entitlements.
“I am writing to address an issue.  In relation to the use of Ms Gillard’s private-plated vehicle, I believe there may have been some use of the car outside of the guidelines, particularly in relation to guideline 4.4.7.
“To ensure absolute compliance with the guidelines, please find enclosed a payment of $4243.58 to reimburse the department for the use of the vehicle.”  […]
Ms Gillard’s chief of staff calculated the amount based on the kilometres believed to have been travelled by Mr Mathieson, indicating he accrued more than 6,000km before it was brought to the department’s attention. Mr Mathieson, a hair dresser, and Ms Gillard began seeing each other in early 2006.  Soon after he worked for PPS Hairwear and travelled through regional Victoria.  Under the rules he was permitted to use the car—but he could not use it for his own business.
Parliamentary Library records of payments for travel entitlements show the cost to taxpayers of running Ms Gillard’s car more than doubled to $9,200 in the second half of 2006 compared with $4,162 in the same period in 2005.  This was the highest increase of Victoria-based parliamentarians.
The Australian asked Bruce Wolpe, a spokesman for Ms Gillard, for a response from the former prime minister and Mr Mathieson to the disclosures.  Mr Wolpe replied that there would be “no further comment”.
Other documents released previously show the car was in minor accidents, leading to insurance claims for repairs.
A month ago, Information Commissioner John McMillan ruled against Ms Gillard’s attempts to block the release of the material under FOI with a decision in which he stated: “The central facts disclosed in the documents are that there may have been an incident of non-compliance with government guidelines on parliamentary entitlements.”

So, a leman of Ms. Gillard breaks the rules, and—though she often claimed to believe in transparency for governments and ministers—she tries to prevent people learning the truth.  That seems to be a pattern with this woman.

UPDATE III (11 June, 2014):  see “Evidence of this corruption is everywhere”, by Hedley Thomas: 

Bruce Wilson has stopped throwing punches outside the hearing room of the royal commission into union graft.  But four weeks after the allegedly corrupt AWU official stepped away from a Sydney cafe meeting with his lawyer, Kristine Hanscombe QC, and went the biff on a couple of photographers, Wilson’s presence still looms large.
He remains the focus of attention because the inquiry’s senior counsel, Jeremy Stoljar SC, ­started this week’s new round of investigative hearings into the AWU slush fund scandal with a series of powerful and definitive statements.
Stoljar wasted little time in his opening before calling out the slush fund for what it was—a corrupt device that drove a significant fraud.  He described it as “a mere contrivance”.
This corrupt device, misleadingly called the AWU Workplace Reform Association, sprang to life when Julia Gillard, a Slater & Gordon lawyer, gave legal advice to her then-boyfriend Wilson to have it set up. She vouched for it to West Australian authorities, who had doubts.
She strenuously ­denies that she had knowledge of any misuse of, or intent to misuse, the fund.
Stoljar can clearly see the criminality the slush fund spawned.  It is so obvious that he took an unusual step at this early stage of the royal commission—he lined up Wilson and his former ally, Ralph Blewitt, for fraud-­related offences.
But there are some, such as ABC radio’s Melbourne-based broadcaster Jon Faine, who seem to think the former PM, and other key players in the saga, should not have to answer any questions at all.  Using the slush fund’s AWU-linked name, Stoljar explained, the two men issued false invoices to building company, Thiess, “thereby committing an offence under section 558 of the Criminal Code of WA”.  And as “they claimed payment for work that had never been done … to procure a benefit”, they committed another offence under section 409.
What about the “right-wing nut-jobs”, as the then prime minister described some who have tried to raise these matters over several years?  Twitter will be disappointed to learn the commission is an evidence-based zone.
While the ABC and many in the Canberra press gallery chose to run a protection racket of the former PM when these matters were in plain view, Stoljar takes evidence from credible witnesses—former union officials like Ian Cambridge, a serving Fair Work Commissioner; Bob Kernohan, a former AWU president in Victoria; and the tradesmen who received cash while renovating Gillard’s house in the 1990s.
These are serious matters, particularly in light of evidence, flagged by Stoljar for examination today, that Gillard herself obtained a benefit with slush fund cash paying for the costly makeover at her house in Abbotsford, Melbourne.
Stoljar’s position on this was crisp.  “The evidence further establishes that moneys acquired … by the (slush fund) was used … to pay for renovations at the Abbotsford property.  There is a factual controversy about this.”
We can see how high the stakes are in this 17-year-old fraud.  Because if Blewitt and Wilson committed crimes in procuring financial benefits from the fraudulent slush fund, where does that leave the former PM, who has strenuously denied any wrong­doing, and insisted that she paid for her renovations?
The commission should test Gillard without fear or favour to determine whether there has been any wrongdoing.  She was involved in setting up the slush fund.  She was the girlfriend and lawyer for its mastermind, Wilson.  She was an alleged beneficiary herself of thousands of dollars in slush fund cash that paid for the makeover at her house.
Faine thinks it is professional journalism to ignore reams of corroborated evidence since 2012, then latch on to one self-serving witness statement—Wilson’s—and expend taxpayers’ resources in an on-air bid to imbue it with credibility.
Faine’s previous bias on the AWU scandal, which he calls a “house of cards”, was such that even the ABC found him guilty, following a separate and earlier admonishment from the ABC’s Media Watch.  He now seems to believe Wilson’s statement to the royal commission, leaked to him and read on his radio show yesterday, is the real story.
Faine told listeners that in this statement, Wilson claims he was offered $200,000 to tell his story in 2012 to Harry Nowicki, a former union lawyer, and to make stuff up to the detriment of the serving PM. A vast right-wing conspiracy, anyone?
Nowicki, who was introduced to me in 2012 by a senior Labor figure, has been a seeker of truth.  The idea that he would corruptly pay a corrupt union official to lie about corruption is ludicrous.
The key documents and the witnesses—from Slater & Gordon lawyers to the AWU’s national leader, Cambridge, and a plethora of other officials—have been touchstones for the truth since the 1990s, long before Nowicki began looking at this political cover-up.  Nobody would need to lie that there was a fraud; the evidence of the fraud is everywhere.
But Nowicki turned over rocks, talked to witnesses, tracked down documents, lodged Freedom of Information applications and told the likes of Wilson they would be better off coming clean and telling the truth.  In other words, a retired lawyer who once worked for the BLF has done what Jon Faine and the ABC have conspicuously failed to do.

UPDATE IV (9 August, 2014):  see “Office of PM always warrants scrutiny”, by Hedley Thomas:

A former top criminal defence lawyer has reviewed reams of evidence about the AWU slush fund scandal at the ongoing Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption, resulting in his legal opinion that Julia Gillard has problems best resolved by a jury.
Russell Hanson QC, who helped run several royal commission-style probes before his retirement, based his detailed review on sworn witness statements and oral testimony at the commission, as well as key documents including Gillard’s exit interview from the law firm Slater & Gordon in 1995.
His findings are in stark contrast to those by former Labor leader Mark Latham, who has no legal training but who has used his column in The Australian Financial Review to criticise the anti-corruption commission, ridicule Victoria Police and lampoon the evidence of key witnesses.  […]
Hanson’s review dismisses Latham as an “apologist”. Hanson says:  “I am of the view that there has been sufficient evidence given, in a form admissible in a criminal trial, to entitle a jury to find criminal conduct on the part of (former Australian Workers Union boss Bruce) Wilson and (former AWU official Ralph) Blewitt.
“In Gillard’s case, I come to the same conclusion based on the evidence given, supplemented by evidence in the public arena, namely her own public statements.
“The evidence is overwhelming that the Workplace Reform Association (slush fund) was a sham from start to finish.
“There seems to me to be clear and apparently reliable evidence that Wilson was giving Gillard substantial sums of money for her (home) renovations.  Where did it come from?  From the (slush fund)?  Did Gillard know this? What’s a married man with a family in Perth doing paying thousands of dollars for her renovations?  Could she possibly think it was coming out of his own pocket?  Tell it to the jury.”
Leaked emails, published in The Australian last week, and disclosures by former staff have shown how Latham started to become a mouthpiece for Gillard’s former communications head, John McTernan, in 2012, shortly after the AWU scandal burst back into the limelight.   […]
The royal commission is expected to call Gillard, who has always strenuously denied that she did anything wrong in relation to legal advice she gave to her then boyfriend and client, Wilson, that resulted in the establishment of the Australian Workers Union Workplace Reform Association. Wilson has supported Gillard.
In a once-confidential taped 1995 interview with Slater & Gordon’s then boss, Peter Gordon, Gillard described the association as a “slush fund” for union elections.  However, its registration documents that went to the West Australian government claimed its role was work safety and training.  Hundreds of thousands of dollars were paid by building company Thiess into the slush fund, and several witnesses at the royal commission—former AWU staff member Hem, former AWU official Blew­itt and retired builder James—testified that Wilson was behind the payment of thousands of dollars to Gillard, including for the costs of renovations at her home in inner Melbourne.
These matters are also the subject of an ongoing Victoria Police Fraud Squad investigation. Gillard has insisted since 2012 that she paid for her renovations and that she did nothing wrong.  […]
Hanson says he considered three key questions.  Was the slush fund set up with the intention of operating it as a sham?  If so, who was a party to that arrangement?  Who knowingly participated in receiving the proceeds obtained by illegal means?  “There is no basis in the evidence that I have seen for inferring that there was, at the outset, an intention to operate a legitimate organisation,” he says.
“This must be so in the case of Wilson and his willing henchman, Blewitt.  Money paid into the fund was not going to be used for the purposes stated in the incorporation documents.
“As for Gillard’s involvement, this is proved by her own admissions … her own statements show that she well understood the real purpose of the association was to fund election campaigns—a far cry from the idealistic objects set out in the incorporation documents.
“As to the second question, clearly Wilson and Blewitt were the principal parties.  What of Gillard’s involvement?  Blewitt, for what it is worth, has her actively involved in the incorporation exercise.  But in any event, by her own admission, she is the one who put together the documents necessary for incorporation.
“As to the third question, receiving proceeds of money obtained by dishonest means, Blewitt, by his own admission, is guilty.  Wilson is implicated by Blewitt.  In Gillard’s case, a builder, Athol James, says he did work on her Abbotsford house.  He has the quotes, invoices and bank deposit records to prove it.  He says that, although she paid him with cheques, she told him Bruce was paying for this, and he saw Wilson hand her a ‘very substantial’ amount of money.
“Gillard’s counsel challenged (James) on these two statements, but he did not budge.  Without having seen him give evidence, but going on the transcript of his evidence and his documents, I don’t see any reason why a jury could not accept his evidence.
“Apparently some apologists for Gillard seek to brush his evidence aside on the basis that he is 84 years old.  This is ridiculous. Gillard herself admits he did work on her house for her.  His critics need to come up with a more sensible reason for disbelieving him than sniggeringly pointing to his age.  Try that one with a jury.”
Hanson says that weight has been lent to James’s evidence by Hem, who testified that Wilson gave him $5000 cash to deposit to Gillard’s account, which he did.  Hem said Wilson told him “no one else is to see it”.
Hanson says the suggestion that Gillard did not pay for all of the renovation work done on her house has been lent weight by her Slater & Gordon 1995 interview, in which she said, “I can’t categorically rule out that something at my house didn’t (sic) get paid for by the association … or by the union or whatever”.  […]
Hanson says: “I understand that her apologists see this evidence as exculpating her. How this could be so escapes me.
“Far from exculpating Gillard, I see his evidence as consistent with the picture painted by James of payments by cheque which were funded by cash from Wilson.  If Hem’s deposit into her account corresponds in time and amount with payments by cheque to Spyridis, then the evidence from Spyridis consolidates the case against her of receiving cash payments from Wilson for her renovations.
“There is no exculpation here.
“In addition to the above witnesses, Blewitt also gives evidence that in September or October 1994 he went to Gillard’s house, where she directed him to go through the house to where Wilson was out the back.
“At Wilson’s direction he then gave $7000 cash, which had come from the WRA account, to a tradesman working there on renovations. Gillard was not present.  This evidence is consistent with the evidence of James as to Wilson paying for Gillard’s renovations.  On that occasion, Blewitt gave further cash to Wilson.”
Hanson says that if building company Thiess was unaware that its donations were not to be used for the association’s stated pur­poses of improving worker safety and skills, then Thiess was deceived into parting with its money, and each time there was a payment, an offence of obtaining money by false pretences was committed by those perpetrating the pretence.  He says that if the deception of Thiess were planned, then all those who were a party to that plan were parties to a conspiracy to defraud.
Alternatively, if Thiess were aware that there were no “training” services provided by the associati­on but paid up for the sake of industrial peace, then the offenc­e committed was obtaining money by menaces—blackmail.
“Blewitt and Wilson are shown to be involved in these offences, as set out above,’’ Hanson says.  “In Gillard’s case, once it is seen that she drafted the objects of the asso­ci­ation, while knowing that its true purpose was otherwise, she is shown to be a party to a plan to defraud donors to the fund (conspiracy to defraud), or a party to a plan to extract money from ‘donors’ by blackmail.  Proof that the association’s purpose was other than as stated is in her own words, where she describes it as a ‘slush fund’ for finan­cing election campaigns.
“In Gillard’s case, the evidence from James that Wilson was paying is both confessional and direct. She told him Bruce was paying (confessional evidence) and he saw cash handed to her by Wilson (direct evidence.)
“There is also her acknowledgment that she could not rule out that money from the association paid for her renovations.
“Whether or not the money Wilson gave her and her builders came from the association, and whether or not she knew that to be so, are matters of inference.  In my opinion, they are inferences a jury would be entitled to draw.”

The Australian adds an editorial “Why we are publishing this”:

Today The Australian is publishing an important story about Julia Gillard’s involvement in the AWU slush fund scandal.  The story contains the considered opinion of a respected Queen’s Counsel—Russell Hanson QC—who has reviewed sworn testimony given at the union royal commission.
The Australian does not publish this story lightly. However, the conduct and background of a person who would, just a few years after these events with the AWU, become an elected federal parliamentarian and, ultimately, be elevated to the highest office goes to the very heart of government and political matters in Australia.  […]
[A]s Hanson notes, there is enough evidence to suggest that the matter should now be properly considered by a court and a jury.

UPDATE V (10 September):  see “You Be the Judge: It’s the AWU Slush-Fund Finale” by Hedley Thomas:

There are precedents, but royal commissions run by judges are generally reluctant to call other judges to give evidence that might verge on the tawdry or unbecoming.  […]
“Please have a seat, Justice Murphy,’’ said Dyson Heydon QC, the retired High Court judge heading the royal commission into union corruption, to the Federal Court’s Bernard Murphy about 10am.
For yesterday’s hearing—and for the probable finale today when Julia Gillard goes into the witness box—the controversial matters canvassed include the real concerns by some of the senior partners of law firm Slater & Gordon in 1995 that their colleague, who 15 years later would become prime minister, might have been embroiled in corruption with a bent union boss boyfriend, Bruce Wilson.
As Murphy bluntly told yesterday’s hearing: “The concern that was conveyed was that Julia Gillard had created an association (union slush fund) which might have been set up corruptly and might have involved corrupt moneys and it involved the firm in the conveyance of these moneys.
“She was being accused of wrongdoing by others in the firm. She assured me there was nothing in it.”
Like many of Gillard’s supporters, he did not believe it then.  Nor, he added, does he believe it now.  He told the inquiry that he did no investigations and asked few questions.  Gillard assured him she had done nothing wrong.
Nineteen years after these concerns were first confidentially raised and caused great alarm in the firm, Heydon’s royal commission is now at the pointy end of a remarkable chapter in politics, law and the media.
Just as it is unusual for a serving senior judge to be called to a royal commission into corruption, so it is rare for a former prime minister to be compelled to account for her own conduct as a lawyer for an ­allegedly corrupt boyfriend and client.  Her entrance at 55 Market Street in Sydney’s CBD to give evidence today will ignite powerful responses.
Former Labor leader Mark Latham leads those who condemn the commission’s work as a deplorable witch hunt, fuelled, he claims, by Labor enemies, dodgy witnesses, innuendo, and The Australian.  This is despite an ongoing police investigation and the evidence collated, including sworn statements suggesting the probable proceeds of fraud—thousands of dollars—were funnelled into Gillard’s bank account and into home renovations.
The other camp includes Gillard’s former rivals such as Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, a former lawyer herself who was deeply troubled by the evidence. She doggedly pursued the then prime minister in question time in November 2012 until Tony Abbott as opposition leader promised a judicial inquiry.
There are, too, the key witnesses such as Ralph Blewitt, who recalled paying off tradesmen at the future prime minister’s house with ill-gotten cash; the builder, Athol James, who has told of seeing Wilson hand Gillard “wads of notes”, while she told James that he would be paid for his work by her as Wilson gave her cash; and AWU staffer Wayne Hem, who said he put $5000 in her bank ­account.
Murphy did not know about these details in 1995, but he spoke with authority yesterday as one of the firm’s equity partners, and Gillard’s then manager.  Their offices were side by side on the ground floor of a building off Melbourne’s Little Bourke Street, and they worked together with union ­clients including the AWU and its now-infamous Wilson
As Murphy plainly stated in his testimony, the concerns at Slater & Gordon back in 1995 were neither trivial nor the product of the feverish imaginations of misogynists or nut-jobs on the internet.  They were the concerns of senior partners, such as Peter Gordon and Nick Styant-Browne, who could scarcely believe the predicament the firm had been placed in because of the work, which was not disclosed by Gillard, for her boyfriend.
The misleadingly named AWU Workplace Reform Association (the slush fund) that was set up with her legal advice and her letter-writing to West Australian authorities was for her then boyfriend.  It is alleged it would be used fraudulently by Wilson and his sidekick, Blewitt, to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars from building company, Thiess.
Gillard has always denied any wrongdoing and has strenuously insisted she knew nothing about the operation of the slush fund.
Murphy would not have meant to make her position more difficult on the eve of her giving evidence, but he didn’t help by volunteering yesterday that he “would have opened a file in those circumstances”, in relation to the work on establishing the association (she didn’t open a file and this meant her partners were in the dark about the slush fund’s existence for three years of its operation).
Murphy also agreed, as he read the rules and objects of the formal legal entity, that he could see nothing relating to it being an election slush fund.
He reinforced the seriousness of the case.  He told how partners were also “very concerned” about Gillard’s role in the conveyancing of a property that would be purchased with money from the slush fund.  He said he had also heard the rumours about AWU funds going towards payment for renovations at Gillard’s property.  But in the end, her word sealed it.
They stayed friends while both were estranged from the firm, which they regarded as having dealt with them very unfairly.  She went into the political arena and became Australia’s first female prime minister.  And in her first 12 months as the nation’s leader, Murphy became the first solicitor from Victoria to be appointed to the Federal Court.

UPDATE VI (20 July, 2015):  the former PM continues to try to rewrite history, and her lackeys in the media continue to aid her attempts:

Julia Gillard has revealed in a new interview she should have addressed the blatant sexism and misogyny she endured as Australia’s first female prime minister early on in her tenure.

“I should have recognised that if I didn’t deal with it up front, it would build,” she told The Times in an interview in London.

Yeah, sure, that was her one big mistake.  See how “network writers” of News Corp Australia provide historical background, complete with a censored but historically inaccurate “b***h” and a casual “of course”:

(During her run, Gillard was subjected to blatantly sexist attacks; from Tony Abbott pointedly making speeches in front of placards stating ‘Ditch the b***h’, to Alan Jones saying Gillard should be put in a bag and thrown out to sea, among many, many others.)

Gillard, of course, made global headlines in 2012 when she stood up in parliament and gave her PM-defining speech on sexism and misogyny.

Mr. Abbott inadvertently spoke in front of two signs whereon were written, in capitals, “ditch the witch” and “Juliar…. Bob Browns [sic] bitch”.

Yet More on Gillard

In an editorial, The Australian rightly explains that Hon. Julia Gillard must answer legitimate questions anent matters which cast doubts on her truthfulness, integrity and competence:

Julia Gillard’s Labor Party and media defenders are deliberately conflating the forensically researched and substantiated reporting of this newspaper with a vengeful internet campaign directed at the Prime Minister.  Former Labor leader Mark Latham, writing in The Australian Financial Review, has likened the online campaign to the American “birther” conspiracy [which exists only because the mendacious President Obama refuses to release his authentic birth certificate and other related material] and accused this newspaper of giving “succour” to its claims by assigning a "so-called investigative" reporter to the case.  There is, of course, no connection.
The Australian’s Hedley Thomas is an investigative reporter of the highest standing who has won five Walkley Awards, including the Gold Walkley for revealing the truth behind the Mohamed Haneef fiasco.  In fact it was Thomas who exposed the involvement of far-right activist and former One Nation adviser John Pasquarelli in promoting allegations against Ms Gillard.  By winning the trust of numerous sources close to the Prime Minister’s former employer, Slater & Gordon, as well as others involved in the Labor Party and union movement (none from the Coalition), Thomas has uncovered important facts about Ms Gillard’s conduct as a lawyer and her departure from the firm in 1995-96.  Yet she has refused to provide a full explanation of these consequential events which, together with the way she has obfuscated over the affair, raise questions about her judgment.  By refusing to answer direct questions, Ms Gillard and her supporters seek to dismiss this newspaper’s revelations as part of a “scurrilous” campaign. To this end—and because this time-honoured tactic of smearing the messengers has provided the more incurious media with an excuse not to pursue the matter”the sleazy and possibly defamatory online campaign is helping Ms Gillard to shelter from accountability.

On Sunday, Ms Gillard attacked our editor-at-large, Paul Kelly, arguably the nation’s most eminent political journalist, because he dared to follow up allegations made through this newspaper by former Slater & Gordon partner Nick Styant-Browne.  “The central point was that the partner alleged you had to resign because of this issue,” said Kelly.   “Is that correct or not?’  “Look, Paul,” Ms Gillard responded, “I did resign from Slater & Gordon, that’s a matter of public record.  I made the decision to do that.  I mean, join the dots for me, Paul.  What matters about this today for Australia and me being Prime Minister?  Just articulate that ... I did nothing wrong.”

While Ms Gillard dodges the question, Thomas has now confirmed through a second senior partner at the time, Peter Gordon, that the firm considered “terminating” Ms Gillard’s employment over her handling of the AWU matters before accepting her resignation.  Mr Gordon and Mr Styant-Browne are not “birthers”—they are experienced lawyers who have been cautious and deliberate about their statements.  […]

There are clear matters of public interest at stake, such as the Prime Minister’s character, and how this saga impacts on her efforts to tackle union corruption.  So it is surprising some journalists dismiss the issue as blogosphere scuttlebutt over an old story.  Dennis Atkins in The Courier-Mail says: “What is missing is any specific allegation and exact questions Gillard should answer.”  The ABC’s Barrie Cassidy says “allegations were not put” to Ms Gillard.  Mr Latham said our reporting has “not taken the story any further”.  The editor of The Monthly accused this newspaper of a “creative interpretation” of evidence. These journalists may claim there are no new allegations that warrant a response but this is not the view of the former Slater & Gordon partners or senior ALP and AWU officials. Mr Styant-Browne says the matter is of “genuine public interest”.  In 1996, then AWU national secretary Ian Cambridge called for a judicial inquiry as he feared “serious corruption” had taken place.  Former attorney-general Robert McClelland, then a solicitor engaged by the AWU to recover the misappropriated funds, told parliament in June that questions remained unanswered and action needed to be taken to ensure this kind of corruption was not repeated.  Mr Styant-Browne said he did not “contemplate” that Slater & Gordon would “spin the facts of (Ms Gillard’s) departure” in order “to protect” her.

Ms Gillard has consistently denied any knowledge or involvement in any wrongdoing.  In November 2007 she said she was “young and naive”, yet she had held the senior position of partner at the firm from 1990 to 1996 and was in her mid-30s when this work was being undertaken.  These events demand a serious response from Ms Gillard addressing her conduct at the firm and why she didn’t open a file for her AWU work; her knowledge of how Mr Wilson used the association she established; why she left the firm; and what she subsequently did to ensure any misuse of AWU funds ceased.

See some of our previous posts:

“‘Young and Naïve’ and ‘the Benefit of the Doubt’” (21 August, 2012);
“Duplicitous Gillard and the Sham Entity”—Michael Smith video (20 August, 2012);
“More on Gillard” (20 August, 2012);
“Using the PM’s Defence” (20 August, 2012);
“Gillard and ‘False Assertions’”  (4 August, 2012);
“Gillard and the AWU Scandal”—nine video clips (30 July, 2012
“‘Depart, I Say, and Let Us Have Done with You’” (21 July, 2012);

“A Song from Julia” (23 June, 2012);

“The PM’s Distress” (22 June, 2012);

“A Song for Julia” (5 June, 2012);

“The PM Lied” (1 March, 2012);

“Unfit to Lead” (28 February, 2012);

“A Cowardly Kim Carr v. a Courageous Kim Carr” (16 February, 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” (sadly inaccurate, 31 August, 2011);
“Another Story You May Not Read” (29 August, 2011);
“A Story You May Not Read” (29 August, 2011);
“A Clean Energy Future” (at The Friends of CO₂, 18 July, 2011)

“The PM and the People Agree” (4 July, 2011);
“The Wisdom of Julia Gillard” (at The Friends of CO₂, 26 June, 2011);
“Let Them Eat More Dirt” (30 May, 2011); and
“Gillard the Liar: ‘No Carbon Tax’” (26, February, 2011).

UPDATE I:  see “Julia Gillard urged to ‘take the gloves off’”, by David Crowe and Sid Maher, in The Australian, and Andrew Bolt’s comments thereon in “Labor Urged to Punish Its Critics”:

These guys are talking like tin-pot totalitarians from some Third World country, contemplating using state power to cow their media critics.  Despicable:

Julia Gillard has lashed out at her online accusers over the circumstances of her departure from law firm Slater & Gordon in the mid-1990s, as her caucus colleagues urged her to “take the gloves off” in a fight with the press.
The Prime Minister took aim at news coverage of her personal life and blasted internet blogs for their “gender-based” attacks on her leadership, amid increasing scrutiny of her link to a disgraced union official and her departure from Slater & Gordon in the mid-1990s.
In a heated discussion within the Labor caucus, MPs urged backbencher John Murphy to “go harder” as he attacked News Limited, publisher of The Australian, over its coverage of the government.
Ms Gillard responded by vowing to proceed with media reforms by the end of the year, keeping the threat of regulation hanging over the sector. …
In caucus, Mr Murphy called on Ms Gillard to toughen the regulation of the media and take on News Limited over what he described as its campaign against the government. Observers said Mr Murphy’s remarks struck a chord with a group of caucus members calling on Ms Gillard to create a new authority to oversee print, online, radio and television news.

[All journalists] should ask themselves [whether] they can afford to have this government returned, emboldened to wreak vengeance with new laws against free speech and a free press.  It has already called a media inquriy into what the Greens called the “hate media”—newspapers criticised their policies and were sceptical of global warming theology.
It seems astonishing that such intolerance of debate—and such use of state power to stifle it—should occur in modern Australia.

UPDATE II:  see also Bolt’s “The AWU scandal: what Gillard’s 1995 interview reveals”.

UPDATE III:  in “Case raises new questions over Gillard’s conduct as a lawyer”, Lenore Taylor and The Sydney Morning Herald finally deign to notice that something may be amiss.  The case, of course, raises more than just Gillard’s conduct as a lawyer, but we can’t expect the SMH to demand integrity and competence from the PM any time soon.

UPDATE IV:  in “Renovator’s dream to legal nightmare”, Hedley Thomas of The Australian mentions the comical as well as the criminal aspects of Julia Gillard’s 1995 interview with Peter Gordon:

Julia Gillard faced her questioners in a conference room in Melbourne on September 11, 1995. A tape-recording device was on the table.  A 25-page transcript would be produced away from the office, to limit gossip among secretaries and other lawyers.
After eight years of service, her plum job as salaried partner at Slater & Gordon lawyers, an entree to the big end of town in Labor politics and trade unions, hung by a fraying thread.
As a result of a tip-off to one of the other partners, she was now embroiled in a serious internal probe into her own actions in facilitating, unknowingly or knowingly, a suspected fraud involving hundreds of thousands of dollars by her then client and lover of the previous four years, allegedly corrupt Bruce Wilson.
The firm’s partners considered terminating Gillard, but in the end she would resign because staying on was not an option.  The relationships, as former partner Peter Gordon revealed in eloquent detail in a remarkable draft statement leaked to The Australian this week, had “fractured, and trust and confidence evaporated”.
But before her departure, there was the questioning session.  It was serious, yet parts were comical.  As the transcript, provided to The Australian yesterday, shows, it covered Gillard’s florid descriptions of a cast of bumbling characters in disastrous renovations of her modest Victorian cottage in Abbotsford, an inner-city Melbourne suburb.
We hear of the Australian Workers Union’s Bill the Greek (aka Vassilis Telikostoglou), his mate Con “Spiri, Spiridis or Spiritis, or a word to that effect”, a slow-working but attractive Swedish builder, Taugney, and Gillard’s boyfriend, Wilson.
Between them, she explained with exasperation, they pulled off a home renovating disaster that left her fuming.
“The result was truly hideous and I think Geoff [Shaw] saw when he dropped me off one night and everybody else who’s passed my house has commented on it,” Gillard says, as she despairingly describes a low-level brick fence that Bill the Greek erected.
“I didn’t ask him to do that.  In order to try and make it look less hideous, part of the work that Con was to do was to mortar it and put pickets on it …. to try and stop it looking quite as Greek, dare one say.  He, you know, pleased as punch sort of said he had built it for me.  Whether that means he himself did it, given Bill’s obvious difficulties with the truth, I no longer know.”
Peter Gordon asked:  “What are Bill’s obvious difficulties with the truth?”
Gillard:  “He’s just a big Greek bullshit artist.”
Gillard saw other defects.  And Bill the Greek got another tongue-lashing.
“When I came home and saw the posts and windows which had got done in one day, I raised it immediately with Bill the Greek in fairly vociferous tones and said ‘this has just totally buggered up the job’,” she says.
“This is just hideous, you know, you need to talk to Con about it.  I periodically raised with Bill ‘what on earth is happening with Con and these windows and these posts, and the tiling’s uncompleted and the fence is uncompleted’. Bill would say ‘I’ll fix it, I’ll fix it, but it never got fixed.”
The Australian has not been able to contact Mr Telikostoglou.  […]
She told Gordon it was possible some work was funded from either the Australian Workers Union or the association that bore its name.  She said: “I can’t categorically rule out that something at my house didn’t get paid for by the union or whatever, I just, I don’t feel confident saying I can categorically rule it out, but I can’t see how it’s happened because that really is the only bit of work that I would identify that I hadn’t paid for.”
Making it messier still was the fact Wilson, then a leading figure in the AWU with designs on a national leadership role, had run his allegedly corrupt activities through the entity, the AWU Workplace Reform Association, that Gillard had established for him.  He told Gordon, the association was used as a “slush fund”.
Ordinarily, such circumstances should not have been insurmountable. Lawyers can hardly be held accountable for legitimate advice they provide to crooked clients.
But Gordon and the other equity partners, including Nick Styant-Browne, had become aware of other disturbing complications. They held concerns about Gillard’s conduct, and the potential reputational damage and litigation risk to the partnership, already riven with tension.  […]
Much of the transcript, tightly held since 1995, has been redacted to ensure no breach of lawyer-client privilege.
Gordon asked Gillard numerous questions about the circumstances of her legal work for Wilson and his sidekick and union bagman Ralph Blewitt, and some of the most concerning irregularities including her failure to open a legal file for the establishment of the association.  She said the association was a “re-election slush fund”, meaning it had nothing to do with its stated purposes including workplace safety or training.
“It’s common practice, indeed every union has what it refers to as a re-election fund, slush fund, whatever, which is the funds that the leadership team, into which the leadership team puts money so that they can finance their next election campaign,” Gillard told Gordon.  […]
The questioning of Gillard on September 11 and the subsequent transcript were significant steps in the firm’s investigation of her conduct.  It would not be long before she was gone from the firm, her conduct questioned, her future employment uncertain, her relationship with Wilson over, and her accusers in the Labor Party lining up to provide information to Liberal figures to launch attacks on Gillard in Victoria’s parliament.
For the past 17 years the explanation of a scandal that has dogged Australia’s first female prime minister remained untold by Gillard, despite parliamentary barbs.

36 St. Phillips Street, Abbotsford—long after Bill the Greek’s improvements

UPDATE V:  rather generously, the kind-hearted Larry Pickering, despite his recent attacks on the PM’s integrity, favours her with some gratuitous advice:

Do not answer any questions!
Under no circumstances answer any question from anyone, including Paul Kelly.  Do not make any statements.  If you do, it will amount to self harm of suicidal proportions.
You know there is much material yet to be released:  Transcripts, tapes, signed statements, affidavits, the evidence of Blewitt, Wilson’s media deal, McClelland, Cambridge, a Federal Court Judge, former partners, colleagues and associates, the AWU, the Law Institute, Vic Police FOI material and much more.
You cannot possibly know the extent of what will be presented as corroborated evidence.  Get one thing wrong and you will be mercilessly beaten all the way to the gallows with it.
Keep stonewalling them, Prime Minister.  You are on a hiding to nothing—unless of course you want to tell the entire truth.  But that would be a silly and uncharacteristic thing to do.
Oh dear, silly me!  Fancy teaching you to suck eggs when your army of well-paid minders would have already advised you of that.
Anyway, just hang in there, mate. It might all go away.

UPDATE VI:  at Kangaroo Court of Australia, in “Julia Gillard caught lying on the public record in 2007 about the Bruce Wilson AWU fraud scandal”, Shane Dowling observes:

Evidence that has come to light in the last few days clearly shows Julia Gillard lied on the public record in an interview she did in 2007.  The evidence shows Julia Gillard has given three different reasons [for setting] up an association that was used by Bruce Wilson and Ralph Blewitt to funnel fraudulently gained money through.  […]
The obvious problem is Julia Gillard [wrote on the relevant incorporation form] that the association was for “development of changes to work to achieve safe workplaces”; she told Nick Styant-Browne [she] “understood the purpose of the association was to hold re-election funds for  union officials—she stated it was referred to as a re-election fund or slush fund”; and she told Glenn Milne “she has strenuously denied ever knowing what the association’s bank accounts were used for.”  Three different times three different answers!

UPDATE VII:  Andrew Bolt notices that yet another sycophantic apologist for Julia Gillard, Michelle Grattan, in “Still waiting for new material on a story 17 years old”, can no longer ignore the story completely (though, naturally, the servile supporter pretends that it might not be so very important, really, because, ignoring all new evidence, she sees no new evidence):

Even Michelle Grattan at The Age now admits that perhaps, just perhaps, Julia Gillard didn’t quite do the right thing after all:

Then and now, this matter is unsavoury.  Even believing everything Gillard has said, it is clear that she did not follow best legal practice.

UPDATE VIII:  in “Gillard’s big mistake”, Andrew Bolt spots the inconsistencies in Gillard’s narrative:  the Australian Workers Union Workplace Reform Association was formed, supposedly, to provide “development of changes to work to achieve safe workplaces” or, perhaps, “for the purpose of promoting and encouraging workplace reform for workers performing construction and maintenance work”, yet Gillard later admitted that it was in fact, to her knowledge, established and used, unlawfully, as “a slush fund”.

UPDATE IX:   An End in Sight

It is not her lies
or self-serving evasions
but the cover-up

which now spells utter
doom for Julia Gillard’s
rotten government—

and not before time!
For incompetence, her mob
takes the bloody cup;

but, as is often
the case, truth will out, and we
can be confident

that, finally, meet
officials will launch a full
investigation

into how corrupt
she is, and how she managed
to serve the nation.

UPDATE X:  Larry Pickering adds another provocative article, “When Lawyers Lie”, to his Facebook page:

Judge Bernard Murphy was appointment by Julia Gillard to the Federal Court in April of last year.

He declared yesterday, “My resignation was not in any way motivated by any suggestion of wrongdoing on my part in relation to Slater & Gordon’s representation of the Australian Workers Union or Mr Bruce Wilson.”

Judge Murphy insisted he was not “sacked” from the law firm.  He also said he resigned from the firm.

“I was not involved in any investigation at Slater & Gordon in relation to my conduct in respect of the AWU or Mr Wilson,” he said.

Technically correct, Sir.  Carefully worded but grossly misleading.  You must have been a lawyer, Sir?

1. Bernard Murphy was not only present but assisted and advised Julia Gillard in drawing up that fraudulent document in order to launder misappropriated AWU funds.

2. He could not have been sacked anyway because he was a Senior Equity Partner.  He owned part of Slater & Gordon.  The only way he could be removed from the firm was to agree to a settlement.  Peter Gordon made him an offer he couldn’t refuse, with conditions attached.  His subsequent resignation was a mere formality.

3. No, he “wasn’t involved in any investigation”.  But the investigation into Julia Gillard had certainly shown his complicity.  He was caught red handed, had accepted the deal Peter Gordon offered, and left... just before Gillard was asked to.

In 2010 he asked Prime Minister Gillard for an appointment as Judge to the Federal Court of Australia.  Gillard granted her former boss’s request.

As an aside, Gillard as Prime Minister, also appointed former AWU Secretary, Ian Cambridge, as a Commissioner of Fair Work Australia.  The position commands a high salary.

Ian Cambridge, along with Attorney General Rob McClelland, was the author of a damning and accusatory affidavit [available hence] concerning the Wilson/Gillard scandal.  Ian Cambridge also has also demanded a Royal Commission into the AWU fraud.

Ian Cambridge declared today, in answer to a question regarding his demand for a royal Commission, that “I am a member of a quasi-judicial tribunal.  As a member of (Fair Work Australia) it is not appropriate for me to make public statements.”

UPDATE XI:  see “Girl Talk”, by Peter Smith, in Quadrant Online:

Let’s see, in no particular order, and without trying to be exhaustive, Gillard says that the carbon tax was forced on her as a substitute for an ETS which she would have otherwise introduced.  Yet we were all here when she went to the election with everything up in the air and in the hands of soon-to-be-established citizens’ assembly.  Accused of reneging on a deal with Rudd, she took refuge in confidentiality; as she did to hide the blatantly obvious fact that she’d never spoken to Rudd about the government “losing its way”.  She denied saying in cabinet that “elderly people don’t vote labour”.  All of a sudden confidentiality was dispensable; as it was when she tried to explain away reports of her opposition to paid maternity leave in cabinet by saying that she was just applying rigorous scrutiny.  She left the impression that the replacement of the RSPT with her cobbled-together MRRT would reduce revenue by only $1.5 billion, without telling us that Treasury had in the interim substantially increased projected resource prices.  She let the “Dili solution” run as a concrete proposal until it came under scrutiny and then took refuge in the fine print of her announcement.  Unbelievably, she said that she couldn’t recall seeing polling results immediately before challenging Rudd, and knew nothing of her staff preparing a victory speech two weeks before.  She said that a report of the offer of a senate seat and the foreign affairs ministry to Bob Carr was “completely untrue”; before we found out that it was true.  Even the deferential man himself, Peter van Onselen, in The Australian (“Excuse me miss, but the Prime Minister’s cheating”, 24 July, 2010), called into question her honesty in effectively claiming credit for particular educational advances which were none of her doing.

Gillard leaves a nasty impression of someone willing to bury the truth to save her political skin; disquietingly, even when the truth is bound to emerge.

UPDATE XII:  Andrew Bolt, in “SMH, cursing, at last agrees Gillard must answer”, rightly condemns the belated recognition that, maybe, just maybe, a deceitful Prime Minister with a shady and possibly criminal past, who continues to lie pathologically within and without Parliament, might be worth investigating by Fairfax newspapers:

The Sydney Morning Herald—unusually—writes a 5.30pm editorial to get up to speed on a scandal it has not just ignored and dismissed.

To excuse its failure to report and hold Labor to account, the paper first peddles a false history of the scandal, and demonises the allegedly anti-Labor newspaper which has done most of the recent investigation:

The reluctance [of Julia Gillard to answer questions] is even more forgiveable when the old issue is dragged out by a vitriolic blogger unabashed about employing personal invective and obscene cartoons, and then picked up by a news organisation that makes no bones about having the objective of bringing her government down.

“And then” picked up?  How vile.  In fact, some of us have worked and written on this story for a year, long before Pickering got involved.  Funnily enough, most of the early work was done by Michael Smith, part of the Herald’s Fairfax stable, who was then effectively sacked for asking “unauthorised questions” of the Prime Minister—a most shameful incident in Fairfax’s history of “independent journalism”. The Australian started to get involved when Robert McClelland—not Larry Pickering—raised the matter in Parliament, and has since then broken genuine, legitimate stories—almost every one of which the Herald tried to play down and pooh-pooh.  This editorial now reads like Labor supporters vomitting at having to face facts at last about a scandal that good reporters should have probed from the start.
But belatedly, hurriedly, the Herald joins the chorus of calls for Gillard to answer serious questions about serious matters.  […]
Let me put this delicately, to avoid the attention of lawyers.  Others in Labor—people with ambitions beyond the next election—may do well to consider that the bigger that interest in this scandal grows, the bigger the demand will be for everything and everyone involved in it to be exposed and examined.  Even those who’d say they were but innocent bystanders.  It’s the cover-up that gets you every time.

The SMH gullibly accepts (or pretends to accept) the word of the PM:

She has later admitted she was “young and naive” and over-trusting of Wilson. 

That’s not a credible admission, but an audacious, though lame, self-serving excuse: a lawyer aged thirty-two, a senior partner in a major firm, who conveniently just happened to assist a major fraud, was merely the poor, innocent, unknowing victim of a cunning, criminal boyfriend?  Ha!  How, then, does she explain her subsequent support for, say, the criminal behaviour of the likes of that pornerastic peculator, Craig Thomson, in her older and less naïve years?

This blog, by the way, as can be seen in the list of our previous Gillard-related posts, in but one of many which have shewn an interest in this important story long before Mr Pickering’s amusing contributions first appeared.

UPDATE XIII:  Paul Zanetti, at Pickering Post, contributes a defence of free speech and an attack on sycophancy in “Chewing Off Your Own Leg”:

Members of the ‘establishment’ mainstream media club were caught out, embarrassed and humiliated.  They’d missed out on, or were afraid to touch, one of the biggest stories in Australian political history.  What to do?  Some, such as Hedley Thomas and Matthew Franklin of The Australian decided to grab the ball and run, too, with questions to answer.  Editor, Rick Feneley, of Fairfax’s Sun-Herald appointed reporter Natalie O’Brien to start asking questions and publish.  Paul Kelly, respected political stalwart from The Australian took Gillard head-on, live on TV, in a battle of dogged questions and Prime Ministerial obfuscations.

Others such as Peter van Onselen decided to defend the PM, attack Pickering on air, making a preliminary uninformed judgement call to absolve the PM, in an effort to placate her to appear on his little watched pay TV show.  Fawning like a lovestruck teenager, he gushed on air, “I believe you, Prime Minister”.  She eyed him up and down, snapping back contemptuously about his ‘grand naïvety’.  It wasn’t one of the proudest moments in TV journalism, with van Onselen showing political and media students what not to do when faced with a unique opportunity to get facts on one of the biggest political story I can remember.  Others decided to make Pickering the story, betraying their own journalistic responsibilities, scurrying to excuse their own public failures (‘there’s nothing in this’ they ignorantly informed a curious public, without actually having the facts), excusing and exposing their own ineptness, cowardice, tent circling, backside-covering, rank-closing and cloud gazing.  Look everywhere but at the elephant in the room.
Mark ‘no mates’ Latham, publicly defended Gillard without question and for personal interest.  A political freak show in his day and a cartoonists dream who lost the unlosable election to John Howard, Latham became infamous for his explosive temper, breaking a taxi driver’s arm over a cab fare dispute, smashing a newspaper photographer’s camera, attempting to veer his car into a TV news cameraman and intimidating an elderly lady at a children’s swimming pool.  Protect Gillard at any cost, even if that cost is exposed in his own transparent bias, while revisiting his admitted hatred for Kevin Rudd.  There’s a growing Rudd bloc within the ALP and Latham will say whatever it takes to keep his former rival from The Lodge.  He sees Kevin Rudd shadows everywhere.  To this end, he has attacked this story of Gillard’s past as a right-wing conspiracy.  Far from it, I can attest this is all coming from ALP sources.
There’s not been one conservative piece of input into this.  The likes of Nicola Roxon and Tanya Plibersek desperately turn their misguided pot shots at Tony Abbott for something he knows nothing about, except what he reads, and with which he has no connection.  I occasionally read Latham as a reminder why he was not fit to be the PM—the AFR embittered village idiot who is published not for his insightful wisdom but for his outlandish view of the world.  […]
The mainstream media majority is turning on itself and chewing off its own leg as it remains caught in a trap of its own making.  The government so wishes this would all just go away.  Caucus was in a tizz last night deciding the best way to handle this affair.  As of writing Caucus has urged the Prime Minister to ‘go harder’ with media reforms and regulations.  The PM vowed to proceed with media reforms by the end of the year.  Shutting down press freedom and social media will sign the death warrant of the Labor Party for a generation, while making a public hero of Pickering.  It will be intriguing to see [whether] the PM make another disastrous judgement call.

UPDATE XIV (23 August):  the editors of The Australian, rightly, have evidently decided to pursue the Gillardgate scandal relentlessly and with fitting assiduity, and the courageous Hedley Thomas is in the vanguard:  today The Australian publishes, inter alia, “Julia Gillard set up ‘work safety’ entity that was a slush fund” and “Nicola Roxon worked on files after Julia Gillard left Slater & Gordon”, by Hedley Thomas, and “An old flame faded into black”, by Ean Higgins.  The Age is finally covering the scandal with some degree of seriousness in, inter alia, “Did PM break the law in WA”, by Natalie O’Brien, “Should PM have ‘opened a file’?”, by Farah Farouque, “Julia’s big fat Greek reno”, by Tony Wright, and “Lawyers at loggerheads over resignation details” by Michelle Grattan.

UPDATE XV (23 August):  in less than one day this post has lengthened considerably; further updates will be posted to ‘“Τετέλεσται”’.