julia's awu mess isn't going to go away

After her disgraceful performance during the last parliamentary sitting where she didn't even try and answer any of the questions put to her about her intimate role wrt the AWU slush fund, Julia must have been dreaming that the whole thing would go away over the Christmas / summer period. Well that would be wishful thinking - the extended period just gives people more time to think up pertinent questions for her to fail again to answer in the parliament. I wonder if she'll answer any questions about it when the police come knocking on the door of her boganville lodge?


AWU scandal - What Gillard did wrong

By Andrew Bolt December 19 2012(6:08pm)
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Terry O’Connor QC is a former head of Western Australia’s Anti-Corruption Commission. Unlike the Julia Gillard clique in the ABC, he believes Gillard did something very wrong indeed in helping to register a slush fund for her boyfriend with a deceptive name and deceptive articles of association:


Gillard drafted the rules of the association. As drafted they set out a number of general objects for the association including things such as securing benefits for and, contributing to the safety and training of, workers. Significantly, as required by schedule 1 of the act paragraph 3(2) of the objects provides “no part of the property or income may be paid or otherwise distributed, directly or indirectly, to members"…

Importantly, nowhere in either the rules of the association or the application for incorporation is the real purpose of the association set out, namely to raise funds to pay for officials’ re-election campaign. Indeed as noted above paragraph 3(2) of the rules expressly prohibits that…

Section 170 of the Criminal Code WA provides that “any person who, being required under a written law to give information to another person, knowingly gives information to the other person, that is false in a material particular is guilty of a crime and is liable to imprisonment for three years”.

Section 43 of the Associations Incorporations Act also makes it an offence for a person to lodge a document with the commissioner which the person knows is false or misleading in any material respect.

In this case the rules lodged did not state the real object of the association. The application, which certified compliance with the act, falsely certified that the association was eligible for incorporation under subsection 4(1e) of the act as an association of more than five members formed for political purposes when in fact it had only two members - Blewitt and Wilson.

Under either of these provisions Blewitt, as the person who made the application for incorporation, in my view could have been charged with knowingly giving false information to the commissioner ...

Section 7(b) of the Criminal Code provides that where an offence has been committed, a person who does or omits to do any act for the purpose of enabling or aiding another person to commit an offence, is also guilty of the same offence and is liable to the same punishment as if he or she had committed the offence. A lawyer who advises a client to do something that would constitute an offence would be caught by this provision.

Gillard advised Blewitt on the incorporation of the association and prepared the rules of the association and, following a query from the commissioner, wrote arguing for the incorporation of the association…

However, without some explanation from her as to what occurred, there is, in my opinion, a prima facie case that she could have been charged along with Blewitt as she drafted the rules of the association for Blewitt knowing that the rules did not disclose the purpose for which the association was being incorporated.