Surely this needs the proper investigation it didn’t seem to get at the time, given what taxpayers have lost:
The West Australian can reveal that more than $380,000 of State Government money was given to a union “association” that Ms Gillard helped establish on behalf of her then boyfriend Bruce Wilson.
When she was questioned by her employers at law firm Slater & Gordon in 1995 over her role in setting up the Australian Workers Union Workplace Reform Association, Ms Gillard said she understood its purpose was to hold a union re-election “slush fund”.
In documents lodged with the WA Commissioner for Corporate Affairs three years earlier, the association’s stated purpose was the “development of changes to work to achieve safe workplaces"…
According to a 1996 affidavit filed in the NSW Industrial Relations Court when the scandal became public, $385,000 was WA government money that had been provided to construction company Thiess Contractors “for the financing of training schemes and were intended to be spent by the union for that purpose”.
Thiess was the biggest contributor to the association between 1992 and 1994 but refused to lay a complaint when WA fraud squad detectives began an investigation into what Mr Wilson and his WA union colleague Ralph Blewitt did with the money.
More than $92,000 of the Thiess money went towards buying a house in Melbourne, which Mr Wilson lived in when he moved to Victoria. On top of that, at least $220,000 in cash was withdrawn from association accounts in Perth between September 1993 and December 1994…
Without Thiess’ complaint against Mr Wilson and Mr Blewitt, police wrote off the investigation in 1997. The pair were also investigated over claims that $145,000 from a separate union fund was used inappropriately to buy holiday units in Kalbarri. No charges were laid.
Will the Workplace Minister investigate the AWU scandal and ascertain what steps were taken to return any taxpayers’ money that may have been apprpropriated?
