September 2012
The AWU Scandal - the sub-prime Miss Gillard returns
Wednesday, 19 September 2012
The AWU Scandal - Melbourne Law School concerned with cartoons - not ethics
Wednesday, 19 September 2012
I was quite disturbed to read this letter from law lecturers and professors associated with the University of Melbourne Law School. Download StopTheAbuseLetter
What a shame that the law faculty would get itself fired into action over media depictions, cartoons and comments from ordinary citizens without even inclining its head towards the prima-facie offences disclosed in the Prime Minister's behaviour.
These are the people who are charged with producing our next generation of lawyers, officers-of-the-court - and in due course our Judges and Magistrates.
It takes some co-ordination to produce a text and then to have appended to it the signatures of some dozens of very important people. It's a shame that not one of the signatories from the ranks of the Melbourne Law School Professors and others have turned their attention to ethics, professional misconduct, misprison of felony, aiding and abetting in the commission, continuance, completion or concealment of serious indictable offences, obtaining a financial advantage by deception, imposition on the taxpayer, the creation of a false instrument and quite a range of other most distasteful activities.
I hope the Melbourne Law School arrests its own progress down the slippery continuum on which it is descending. A logical next step for it is to offer courses in "how to" get away with $540,000 in other people's money.
I will write to the professors today with a detailed letter describing Ms Gillard's course of conduct in The AWU Scandal and as always you can rest assured that I will let you know of their response.
I do not endorse nor have I ever been associated with the cartoons or lurid and fanciful depictions of Miss Gillard's activities - I hope that those of you who have been visiting this site (about 350,000 page impressions) and my Facebook page (261,000 individual separate people in the past 7 days) will keep me and your fellow visitors on the straight and narrow so far as standards of taste and decency are concerned.
It is abominable and frankly atrocious behaviour on the part of the custodians of the law at what used to be one of our great institutions of learning, to turn their taxpayer-funded attention and skills to a wordy treatise on a side-show when the weight of evidence about egregious malfeasance in The AWU Scandal is here on this website - and on that issue our learned friends remain mute.
No wonder our children are confused about matters of ethics and professional conduct. A formerly distinguished law school tacitly endorses Miss Gillards behaviour and lobbies for the cessation of scrutiny - with its weighty letter released to coincide with Miss Gillard's return to the Parliament after an absence in which many decent people suspended their scrutiny of her role in this affair.
Shame on you Melbourne Law School.
The AWU Scandal - Hedley Thomas
Tuesday, 18 September 2012
I've been asked quite a few times about Hedley Thomas - you'll see there are a few questions about him in the blog comments.
I need to make one thing very clear about Hedley and me - we are absolutely separate in our coverage of the AWU Scandal. I don't run my stories by Hedley and Hedley is the same with me.
That said I'm quite friendly with him and I spoke with him today. He's well, very busy and doing exactly the sort of work you'd expect from one of Australia's finest investigative journalists.
Hedley has referred to his answers to Media Watch as a guide to his work.
I think The Australian newspaper's editorial over the weekend was quite powerful - so much so that I'll reprint it here in full, with thanks to The Australian newspaper.
If only the walls could talk
AUSTRALIA has mostly avoided the ribald character assassinations of British and American politics with a rule of thumb that allows the personal to remain private until it impinges on the professional. Ominously, the odious tactics of US presidential races seem to have arrived on our shores.
Last month, Julia Gillard excoriated The Australian, associating us with "the misogynists and the nut jobs on the internet" because we dared to reveal how, as a partner in a law firm, she secretly helped to establish a union slush fund for her boyfriend -- leading to an internal investigation before she left the firm. The serious issues of legal conduct, character and public interest in this were obvious -- especially for a Prime Minister confronting the current scourge of union corruption. Yet Ms Gillard warned off most media by pleading these issues were personal and old. "This is just nonsense and a distraction from the important work I've got to do as Prime Minister and the important issues for this nation's future," she protested. "In these circumstances, why are we, 17 years later, when these matters have been dealt with on the public record for the best part of a decade and a half, still talking about this?" Most of the Canberra Press Gallery, the Fairfax Press and the ABC accepted this invitation to incuriosity.
Yet this week the government has deliberately and publicly encouraged the media to focus on unsubstantiated allegations against Tony Abbott from his time as a university student 35 years ago. The Opposition Leader was then a brash protagonist in campus politics -- an insight to his character already on the public record. The claim by a former political rival, Barbara Ramjan, that he punched a wall, intimidatingly, near her head had never surfaced before. As our foreign editor Greg Sheridan (a close friend of Mr Abbott at the time) has outlined, the freshness of the allegation is a clue to its likely accuracy. Mr Abbott and Ms Ramjan were central figures in robust debates at the time but this alleged incident never surfaced in claims and counterclaims they published in the letters page of the university newspaper. Nor did it arise in later articles that involved Ms Ramjan and examined Mr Abbott during that period. Suddenly, three decades later, with Mr Abbott ascendant in the polls, the story has emerged.
Unlike the Gillard revelations, the Abbott claims are not supported by documentation and relate to personal rather than professional conduct. Character assessments are relevant for a potential prime minister but this story bears the hallmarks of a personal smear. Ms Ramjan said there was no witness; subsequently, other political allies emerged as hearsay witnesses. A leading Labor figure of that scene supports Mr Abbott's denial. Had such an incident occurred, and mattered, it seems likely it would have resulted in a public reaction or become folklore -- not hibernated until now.
After unsuccessfully adopting a strategy of smear against Campbell Newman in the Queensland election, Labor needs to be careful. So far, Ms Gillard's personal past has been quarantined from public scrutiny. In the slush fund affair, her relationship with a married man was central. And another such relationship has crossed into her own frontbench ranks, blurring the professional and personal. Based on Labor's public comments and private urgings this week, it could hardly complain if the opposition chose to explore these issues.
The AWU Scandal - my letter to the Western Australia Premier today
Tuesday, 18 September 2012
Dear Premier,
In 1991 Thiess Contractors was awarded a contract to build the Dawesville Cutting. At the time the AWU and many construction companies were represented on the board of the Western Australian Government's statutory authority the Building and Construction Industry Training Fund.
In 1996 the Western Australian Police fraud squad received a complaint from the AWU regarding the apparent embezzlement of some hundreds of thousands of dollars from the AWU by Bruce Wilson a former union official.
The Fraud Squad determined that in the matter reported to it, the proper complainant was Thiess. Thiess then advised police that it did not believe it had been defrauded and thus it would not furnish a complaint or statement of loss to the police. The matter was closed with police advising that no offence had been detected.
Premier I am concerned that in its Annual Reports of FY ending 1993 and 1994 to its shareholder or responsible minister, the BCITF reported a manifestly false position regarding the acquittal or disposition of the $516,000 it collected under the "BCITF and Levy Collection Act 1990" and which it then advanced to Thiess for "workplace reform" and training.
The truth is the money that was earmarked for "workplace reform" under an MOU between Thiess and the AWU actually went to the union slush fund set up by Julia Gillard. It went out of the slush fund in cash and to buy a house in Melbourne.
I have attached some documents that you might find useful.
Perhaps you might let me know if you are happy for the status quo to endure - or if you intend to investigate this matter further I'd be obliged if you'd allow me to tell my readers.
Michael Smith
http://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2012/08/the-awu-scandal-fun-with-other-peoples-money.html
http://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2012/08/the-wa-associations-incorporation-act.html
A beautiful message from a beautiful Lady
Tuesday, 18 September 2012
What a beautiful message from a beautiful Lady! Please pass this beautiful message from a beautiful lady on to the preachers of hate.
A Few Tips for the iPad People - Having Trouble Viewing Stuff?
Tuesday, 18 September 2012
Aussieute said:
Love your work Michael, suggestion however is to use a plugin for those of us who visit your site on an iPad. All the sound bits are invisible as the player is Flash. Check out your site on an iPad and see what I mean Here's a few plugins you could use
Email me if you need a hand
Any other tips?