This is the gut-churning reality of corruption.   Good mates in suits, free flowing money, great hookers that old mate pays for, trips, free lunches, homes that self-renovate - don't ask don't tell.

This video shows the natural conclusion, the price for a mis-step along the way.   Here are the underlying truths beneath the suits.   The vicious, flawed characters who break the rules because they can, because they've got a great lawyer, because they're too big to fail and they'll take everyone else down and stop at nothing to keep getting away with it.

If you think corruption doesn't matter, if you are prepared to accept the idea that it's OK to give the green light and not to investigate because of time, or position held by the suspects or any of the thousands of reasons the corrupt can convince you with, then watch this video.   Watch it and put yourself, or someone you love on the boat as the unlucky contestant who's spun up "OFF" on the I Did Nothing Wrong wheel of fortune.  

It would be nice to live in a world where corrupt people aren't tolerated but maybe that's too much to ask first up.   How about where they're not lionised, like the "formidable, gutsy, tough, forged in fire PM Gillard, she took everything they could throw at her and kept going, didn't allow their attacks to stop her, very strong and resilient performance, her finest hour and her legacy for young women."   There's another way to describe it.   She lied.  Regularly.  And lied to cover up her man's corruption and her role in it. 

Corruption is a word with a hollowed out meaning that no longer conveys how atrocious and reprehensible an anathema it is to civilised people.   It's been given increasing acceptability during Gillard's reign with her support for Craig Thomson and her Party's support for Michael Williamson and Eddie Obeid and by the media's support for Gillard's implausible protestations of ignorance about her man's corruption at the AWU, and her conscious abuse of her position as an officer of the court.

I met a senior union official in a pub one night and we spoke for hours, reviewing documents and talking times, dates and places involving corrupt officials.   I was shown documents relating to multi-million dollar loans provided to an official.   The corrupt official was reliant on corrupt cash flows to service those loans. I was chilled to hear my informant's judgement of what this official would do if he feared exposure, the loss of position and thus the calling in of those loans.

We are too Peter van Onselen, I believe you Prime Minister.   When influential people like Peter endorse her implausible and easily disproven claims of innocence, we should raise the red warning flags of corrupt practice in our systems.

So get on the boat, put yourself out there, an expendable, flawed individual who knows too much.   In your last moments ponder how things would have been if we'd just said no early on.   You did do wrong.   And we won't cop it.