http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/piersakerman/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/all_the_strife_is_coming_to_a_head_and_its_gillards/
All the strife is coming to a head … and it’s Gillard’s
A number of senior Labor figures have compared the Gillard government’s performance over the past week with the dying days of the Whitlam government in 1975, marred by distrust.
Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam was seen as a strong leader who distrusted Cabinet members and left them out of the loop.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard has demonstrated that she, too, is unwilling to trust her senior colleagues with sensitive information - such as her chosen September 14 election date - preferring to brief the independents ahead of her Cabinet.
Gillard also chose not to tell Cabinet of her decision to deliver a “captain’s pick” and anoint non-Labor Party member Nova Peris to replace dumped NT Senator Trish Crossin.
“It was the same thing with Gough,” a respected Labor elder said. “A flawed but very strong leader at odds with a significant minority in his own party and distrustful of members of his Cabinet.”
With senior Labor Ministers Nicola Roxon and Chris Evans announcing their resignations at the end of a turbulent week, and with charges laid against Craig Thomson, another leading Labor light added to her woes with a pointed address about the corruption issues dogging Labor.
ALP vice-president Tony Sheldon, the head of the TWU, targeted “B-grade politicians able to thrive forever on corruption and detritus” acting “like cockroaches”, in a speech to Young Labor. Sheldon came third in the ballot for national vice-president, behind a Labor staffer and a Victorian State MP.
He undoubtedly carries a big cudgel for those who believe in blind factionalism of the sort that held sway in Macquarie Street for decades.
While Thomson’s court appearance stole Gillard’s thunder on the first day of her non-official election campaign there are a series of other scandals, as Sheldon noted, which have been years in the brewing and are only now coming to a head.
A number directly reflect upon Gillard’s judgment and will be used by the Opposition to highlight her flawed decision-making and her strong links to characters within the trade union movement.
Chief among the scandals is the ongoing investigation into the extremely serious allegations of fraud which have been made in regard to the activities of her own former boyfriend, the former AWU boss Bruce Wilson, who set up a slush fund with his associates after obtaining legal advice from Gillard.
While Gillard emphatically denies any wrongdoing and insists she knew nothing of the operations of the AWU Workplace Reform Association, which Wilson allegedly looted, Victorian police are continuing inquiries. The NSW police operating Strike Force Carnarvon are still investigating separate allegations against Thomson in relation to the HSU.
Detectives last year arrested and charged another of Gillard’s major union supporters, Michael Williamson, the former federal president of the ALP and former head of the HSU with a range of serious charges relating to alleged fraud.
Gillard’s hand-picked former speaker Peter Slipper is also due to appear at the ACT Magistrate’s Court within the next two weeks to face charges over alleged misuse of CabCharge vouchers.
Then there’s the extraordinary evidence also being produced at Queensland’s Child Protection inquiry, which is now getting into the heart of the long-running Heiner Affair, the broad term used to cover the destruction of documents relating to the abuse of juveniles in state care.
In hearings on January 25, a file note on the Heiner investigation was produced which indicated officials of Queensland’s Goss Labor government may have illegally been given access to Cabinet documents of its predecessor, the Liberal National Party government of Russell Cooper.
The note attached to an October 23, 1989, extract of Cooper Cabinet Collective Minutes tendered to the inquiry shows it was produced for
the Goss government on January 1, 1990, with the handwritten warning: “Note that this document is an extract of the records of the previous government and may not” - underlined - “be shown to a member of the present government except by approval of (Cooper).”
The maximum penalty for unlawfully obtaining or disclosing the contents of such a document is two years’ imprisonment.
When I called the former premier on Friday and asked him whether he had ever given anyone from the Goss government authority to access those papers he said: “This is interesting”.
“I have no recollection of it. I would be surprised if I did. If anyone has any proof that I have such an approval they should show it.”
Two Labor ministers from the time are on the list of witnesses to be called by the commission on February 11.
They are former Family Services Minister Anne Warner and former Heritage Minister Pat Comben.
Commissioner Tim Carmody may also call former cabinet secretary Kevin Rudd as well as the former Premier Wayne Goss.
The spectacle of a series of ex- ministers being called to answer questions will also not assist Gillard’s non-official election campaign.
The lift that Gillard clearly received before Christmas may carry through this weekend’s polling but it will not last.
The public perception of Gillard and her links to a party dominated by a union movement which is increasingly coming under long overdue scrutiny will start to tell.
The darkening clouds show no signs of easing.
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