Dear Ms Gillard,

Congratulations on your civic-minded statement reported in The Australian newspaper today:

Ms Gillard said: "As a nation we've got to make sure there are no gaps, there are no loopholes, there is nowhere to hide, that people who commit serious crimes in our country face the full penalty and the full price, including what can be done through national anti-gang laws and national unexplained wealth laws."

Ms Gillard, you have personal first-hand experience of a major fraud conducted over several years in the 1990s yet you have done nothing to assist authorities to investigate it.   You were with Bruce Morton WILSON from the conception of the frauds in late 1991 up until WILSON left the AWU in August, 1995.  

You handwrote parts of the application to incorporate the sham entity that was the vehicle for the frauds.   You drafted the Objects or Rules of Wilson's fictional Association and you prepared various paperwork designed to achieve its fraudulent incorporation.   You even called it a slush fund when questioned about it in the 1990s - when the paperwork you prepared to incorporate it told authorities no such thing.

You know that Ralph Edwin BLEWITT has admitted to his part in his joint creation - with you - of a false document, a Power of Attorney used by you in the conveyance of your boyfriend's house at 1/85 Kerr Street Fitzroy in 1993.   You have acknowledged your role in creating that document, which you describe as a wholly proper role in which you did nothing wrong.   You know Victoria Police are investigating a complaint naming you as the suspect in crimes associated with that document, yet you have not approached police to save the state the time and expense of its investigation.

You permitted, or did not stop or report Bruce Wilson when he renovated your house in circumstances where you some months after the event you couldn't rule out the possibility that tainted funds, specifically monies belonging to the AWU or the AWU-Workplace Reform Association were used in that renovation.  

You have personal, first-hand knowledge available only to you that would be of unique probative value to the state in reducing its expense and time in investigating the frauds, forgeries, embezzlement and other offences in The AWU Scandal.   You lost your job as a lawyer over The Scandal and your firm noted a irreconcilable conflict of interest in acting for Wilson/Blewitt and for the AWU of sufficient gravity for the firm to cease to act for the union.   You cannot have failed to note the controversy and criminality in the whole matter and yet you continue to deny the state the benefit of your knowledge at a time when the state is incurring substantial costs in its investigations.

If you don't want to tell the state what you know, then please tell us why.  You should immediately state that you refuse to cooperate with authorities on the grounds that anything you say may tend to incriminate you.   That is your right and it's your absolute prerogative to exercise that right.   But as matters stand, you wholly protest your innocence in the matter and have adopted the position of being an innocent, duped and criminally uninvolved bystander.   If that is true, then it beggars belief that you as Prime Minister have done nothing at all to assist the authorities, the Victoria Police Major Fraud and Extortion Squad in its enquiries.  

If you wish to retain the right to silence and to retain your public position of having done nothing wrong and yet still wish to withhold what you know from authorities - then I do not see how you can continue in your leadership role as Prime Minister of Australia.   The conflicts between the interests of the state, of justice and your personal interests seem to me to be too great.

I am an unemployed person and yet I have spent months and months compiling documents, speaking to witnesses and advising authorities of the material I have assembled.   I have done that with no expectation of reward, simply because it is the right thing to do and because the innocent victims of The AWU Scandal deserve to see justice.

You have the apparatus of state at your disposal - you use that apparatus as you did this morning in The Australian newspaper to make fine sounding civic statements, "as a nation we've got to make sure there are no gaps, there are no loopholes, there is nowhere to hide, that people who commit serious crimes in our country face the full penalty and the full price..".   Presumably you say that because you or your advisers know that a functioning liberal democracy should be built upon and should honour those fine notions.   You could bring that statement to life by telling the authorities what you know in The AWU Scandal.

You have the personal means to free up that most scarce investigative resource at the community's disposal - its Major Fraud and Extortion detectives.   There is no shortage of aggrieved persons who have been hurt by fraudsters who would be delighted by the reallocation of detectives.

If your reticence and reluctance to get involved is due to your apprehension about self-incrimination, then please let us know and I will respect your right to silence and will bother you no more.   In the absence of you advising us all thus, we have only your consistent protestations of innocence and your statements that you did nothing wrong.

Then continue to do no wrong.   Go to the police.   Tell them everything you know.   Then we might believe you too.

Michael Smith

Sydney, 19 April, 2013