The AWU scandal left Julia Gillard with questions to answer,...

The AWU scandal left Julia Gillard with questions to answer, but how many reporters bothered asking them? Source: News Limited

VICTORIA'S chief magistrate this week shamed the journalists who'd protected former prime minister Julia Gillard.

He disgraced media outlets which claimed for years there was nothing in the Australian Workers Union scandal.

So I wasn't surprised by the coverage magistrate Peter Lauritsen got when he ruled on Monday that there were reasonable grounds to suspect that legal documents - many prepared or overseen by Gillard as a solicitor - were "in furtherance of the commission of a fraud or an offence" by her then boyfriend and unnamed "others".

Coverage from Fairfax's Age newspaper? None.

Coverage from key ABC current affairs shows such as 7.30 and Lateline? None.

Maybe they were too embarrassed. You see, there are two scandals here.

One is how a slush fund created with Gillard's legal help was used by her then boyfriend, AWU official Bruce Wilson, to rip off employers.

The other is how senior journalists refused to report the scandal and attacked those who did.

Be clear about Lauritsen's judgment. He did not say Gillard as a Slater & Gordon lawyer in the early 1990s knew her boyfriend would siphon off union money with the slush fund she created.

Gillard denies any such knowledge. She insists she did nothing wrong.

But Lauritsen did say the more than 360 documents seized by police from Slater & Gordon this year could not attract legal professional privilege because "in each instance, the communication was made or the document prepared in furtherance of the commission of a fraud or an offence".

Victoria Police could have them for their investigation, he said, and he referred to the lead investigator's affidavit, which stated: "The evidence in this investigation points strongly towards establishing that the creation of the Australian Workers Union - Workplace Reform Association Inc was for the sole purpose of legitimising the 'false' invoicing for 'work' provided by the association."

So why did so many top journalists run dead on this scandal?

Some didn't, of course. Michael Smith pursued it as a host of Fairfax's 2UE, only to be effectively sacked two years ago after management complained he'd asked Gillard "unauthorised" questions.

Columnist Glenn Milne also raised it in 2007 and again in 2011. But he was dumped as a regular writer for The Australian and an ABC panellist after making a minor mistake, wrongly claiming Gillard had lived with Wilson in the house he'd bought with slush fund cash and with Gillard's legal help.

That was all Gillard needed to threaten News Ltd, publisher of The Australian, which pulled Milne's second column and deleted blog posts of mine. Labor later called an inquiry into alleged abuses of the print media.

This attempt to cow our press was horrific, yet many journalists cheered it and trashed Smith and Milne. The ABC's Media Watch presented both as cowboys pursuing an "old allegation" which it falsely claimed "Gillard has already explained".

But Canberra reporters had tried to quash the story ever since Liberals raised it before the 2007 election.

The Age's Jason Koutsoukis, like many, refused to touch the allegations against Labor's then deputy leader, later claiming "fending off an attack based on this old tale shouldn't present too many problems for her".

Milne alone reported in a gentle article - "Julia Gillard: conman broke my heart" - how a "young and naive" Gillard had been misled by Wilson.

Gillard later recalled: "Over the next two or three days I received phone calls from many of the biggest names in the Canberra press gallery expressing absolute disbelief that such things were said (by Milne).

"Nobody followed up the story. It just died."

Well, nearly. More revelations trickled out, thanks to former union organiser Harry Nowicki, internet conspiracy theorist Larry Pickering, Smith and The Australian's prize-winning investigator, Hedley Thomas, who finally legitimised the story.

Eventually even The Age had reporter Mark Baker on the case.

Yet many senior Canberra correspondents still refused to ask Gillard questions put to her by Smith, me and Thomas but not answered.

Nine's Laurie Oakes instead accused us of just "beating up" old allegations.

But the scandal became so notorious that Gillard last year called a press conference to defend herself - although at such short notice that journalists who'd dug the deepest couldn't go.

Again, Oakes wrongly declared Gillard had "answered every question". Fairfax's Michelle Grattan insisted "her answers were credible". Sky News' Peter van Onselen assured Gillard: "You did nothing wrong."

ABC presenter Jon Faine dismissed the scandal as "just an obsession for those who work for Rupert Murdoch" and was so hostile to Smith and Baker that the ABC reprimanded him.

True, Gillard quite probably did nothing illegal.

But I won't need a police investigation to tell me her media mates hushed up what they should have reported.

###

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/awu-slush-fund-scandal-of-the-story-that-nearly-got-away/story-fni0ffxg-1226781024349