kathy jackson, page-13

Its coming denben and not just one of the executive goverment.

Slowly Slowly catchy monkey.

I beleive tompson has just been charged.



SENIOR union figures effectively covered up a fraud scandal revolving around the AWU and Bruce Wilson, then Julia Gillard’s boyfriend and legal client, according to the diaries of the union’s then national leader.

In a September 15, 1995, diary entry, Australian Workers Union head Ian Cambridge described the concealment to a union official as “a bit like the Watergate scandal ...”.

His diary described how the cover-up was helped by a majority vote by the union’s national executive to pay large redundancy cheques of AWU members’ money to three men - Mr Wilson, his bagman Ralph Blewitt and their friend, Bill “the Greek” Telikostoglou - despite fresh and compelling evidence of their involvement in serious fraud.

Law firm Slater & Gordon was involved in negotiating more than $100,000 in redundancy for the men. Ms Gillard worked at Slater & Gordon and acted for the AWU prior to her departure in September 1995 after she admitted helping to set up a “slush fund” for Mr Wilson. There is no evidence Ms Gillard had any knowledge of the redundancy payments. The Prime Minister has repeatedly and vehemently denied any wrongdoing, saying she knew nothing of the operations of the fund, which were used by Mr Wilson and Mr Blewitt to misappropriate union funds.

A former Labor Attorney-General tells us we can trust the source:

DUMPED attorney-general Robert McClelland has vouched for the integrity of Fair Work commissioner Ian Cambridge, who kept a detailed diary of his investigations into alleged union fraud in the 1990s involving the former boyfriend of Julia Gillard…

“He (Cambridge) was one of the most competent and decent trade union officials that I have had the honour of working for. He was incredibly thorough and diligent in everything he did,” Mr McClelland told The Australian yesterday.

Deputy Opposition Leader Julie Bishop is suspicious about the disappearance of crucial documents:

Ms Bishop yesterday questioned why a number of files relating to the establishment of the union slush fund known as the AWU Workplace Reform Association had disappeared....

“This raises concerns about . . . the deliberate destruction of evidentiary documents.”

UPDATE

Dennis Shanahan draws a contrast between the haste to hold an inquiry into churches and the slowness to hold one into union corruption:


In a period of just 48 hours ... Gillard’s position had changed from opposition to a royal commission to walking out of the cabinet room and announcing an inquiry into “institutional responses to instances and allegations of child abuse in Australia"…

Yet the tale of the second calls for a royal commission - into misappropriation and misuse of union funds and questionable practices that may have put workers’ health and safety at risk - is one of slow prevarication where policy outcomes do not suit Labor’s political agenda.

Calls for royal commissions - from union leaders mostly - into the alleged misuse of Health Services Union funds and alleged fraudulent misappropriation of more than $600,000 from an Australian Workers Union slush fund have fallen on deaf ears.

The alleged institutional union protection from officials “averting their eyes”, lack of police investigations, members and officials’ outrage, overlong Fair Work Australia investigations and missing documents have not attracted swift - or any - decision on an inquiry.

UPDATE

Which lawyer helped to set up this other fund for Julia Gillard’s then boyfriend? And are such funds too easily turned into an opportunity for something much like blackmail - extorting money for the benefit of union leaders in exchange for industrial peace?


Victorian police documents reveal that a bank account that had been established as an election fighting fund for the Victorian branch of the Australian Workers’ Union (AWU) received $186,000 in payments from employers, according to The Australian Financial Review.

The corporate payments were reportedly made between December 1994 and July 1995…

The account dates to around the time of a separate fund, the AWU Workplace Reform Association, that has garnered much attention of late. That fund had been set up by AWU official Bruce Wilson, who at the time was dating Prime Minister Julia Gillard while she was working at the law firm Slater & Gordon.

IR consultant and former union official Grace Collier:

In the 1990s, the aura around Bruce Wilson of the Australian Workers Union was such that he was touted as a future prime minister. Our Prime Minister made a decision to begin a relationship with him. Partners of law firms don’t recommend having relationships with people who work in their clients’ businesses. It is not considered appropriate to put yourself in a potentially compromising position. The worst can happen, and for our Prime Minister it did. ..

Gillard ... won praise for an hour-long press conference in which she left us with the impression that to set up a trust fund was a grave offence whereas to set up a slush fund was OK.

Our Prime Minister has no more time for the AWU scandal; she has a country to run.

But ... Ralph Blewitt, the man who is at the centre of the AWU slush fund matter, is poised to tell all he knows to police… This confusing story will be worth paying attention to. Sit up, take notice and be bothered with the detail… Soon things will get very bad or very good, depending on your bent.

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/awu_scandal_how_the_awu_tried_to_hide_wildsons_frauds/