Even just a cursory glance at Labor at any level, the lack of integrity and credibility of it's membership particularly in the higher levels is particularly noticeable.
The tough questions PM refuses to answer
* by: Piers Akerman
* From: The Daily Telegraph
* November 02, 2012 12:00AM
PRIME Minister Julia Gillard is offended. When isn't she these days?She is offended by legitimate questions about her activities as a partner at the Labor law firm Slater & Gordon in the early to mid-'90s.
The questions asked this week in parliament by Deputy Opposition Leader Julie Bishop relate directly to a fund which Gillard set up for a corrupt former boyfriend, Bruce Wilson, who was at the time one of the top bosses of the AWU. Gillard described it as a slush fund during what amounted to an exit interview with senior partners at Slater & Gordon shortly before she left in 1995 to make an unsuccessful bid for a Victorian senate seat. Guess she won't be able to call Julie a misogynist eh
Gillard's stock response to questions about the slush fund and her knowledge of the racket being run by her former boyfriend is to maintain that she addressed all the issues in a press conference she held in Canberra on August 23.
But that is not so. The questions asked by Bishop this week were not asked by the media in August.
On Wednesday, Bishop reminded the Prime Minister that she had previously said that Ralph Blewitt, another corrupt former AWU union boss, had personally provided funds to purchase a property in the Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy in 1993.
Bishop brandished a cheque for more than $67,000 drawn on the account of the AWU Workplace Reform Association (the slush fund Gillard set up for her boyfriend, Wilson) made out to Slater & Gordon and asked whether Gillard still stood by her claim that she didn't know that the money came from the union slush fund that she had assisted in establishing?
Gillard said she stood by all her statements on the matter.
Bishop quoted from an affidavit sworn by another former AWU national secretary, Ian Cambridge, now a Gillard government appointee to Fair Work Australia, which stated: "I am unable to understand how Slater & Gordon could have permitted the use of funds obviously taken from the union without obtaining proper authority from the union."
She asked how "as a lawyer acting for the union and on the purchase of the property, how could the Prime Minister have been ignorant of the source of the funds?" Yeah Julia how come?
Gillard again replied: "I do stand by my statements." Empty as they are... Juliar.
“Given that none of the specific questions asked this week about the slush fund and the Slater and Gordon trust fund have been answered by the Prime Minister previously, how can she continue to assert that she has dealt with them before, as that is patently untrue?"
Gillard's response this time was a complete non sequitur, a diversion, and a retreat into victimhood. As per usual...
"How can the opposition assert that it is focusing on the nation's interests and not the silly, nasty personal politics when it goes down this track?"she asked. But it is in the nation's interests and it is neither silly nor nasty to probe Gillard's past because her repeated claims that she was unaware of problems with the slush fund she set up for her former boyfriend require far more detailed explanation than she has so far provided.
It is in the nation's interests because Gillard has made character a key ingredient of the game she has told Australians she is engaged in with Opposition Leader Tony Abbott. Gillard has NO credibility...
It was Gillard who famously said "game on", it was Gillard who stood at the dispatch box and launched the venomous and unsupported attack on what she claimed was Abbott's misogyny. Juliar!!!
But it is Gillard who now does not want her actions or her past scrutinised because to do so would be nasty.
As The Australian reported a fortnight ago, Gillard and her boss Bernard Murphy from Gillard's law firm Slater & Gordon were able to scare off union whistleblowers who attempted to reveal the facts about Blewitt and the misappropriation of money from the secret slush fund that Gillard had registered.
A defamation action they lodged on Blewitt's behalf in the Supreme Court in October 1993 was sufficient to shut up the whistleblowers.
Blewitt - who now admits to being involved in fraud - transferred money from the slush fund to buy the Fitzroy property for Gillard's then boyfriend, Wilson.
Gillard attended the auction and acted as Wilson's lawyer in the transaction, as well as witnessing a power of attorney giving Wilson control of the asset.
She has never answered questions about how she came to witness that document, either.
But what makes Gillard's statements to parliament so remarkable is that, despite all her bluster, she has still not advanced her opinion about how Blewitt came by so much cash beyond the answer to the same question she gave in the 1995 interview with her concerned Slater & Gordon partners.
Then, according to the heavily redacted transcript which has been released, she said: "It all made, you know, relatively sort of sensible sense."
Her only subsequent qualification to that explanation is that she was "young and naive".
Gillard's Scottish spin doctor John McTernan, employed in the PM's office on a 457 visa issued to employers who cannot find skilled Australian citizens or skilled permanent residents to fill a position, says he doesn't anticipate the Prime Minister adding more to what she has been saying in parliament.
Without wishing to be nasty, it is really not too much to ask the Prime Minister to make a full statement about her role in establishing the slush fund.