Misconduct in public office is a criminal offence carrying a maximum
jail term of 10 years under Section 320 of the Crimes Act 1958.
Julia Gillard became Deputy Opposition Leader in December, 2006. Was Australia ready for a single lady to occupy the Lodge? Having Tim there certainly helped in the media stakes and it looks like Tim did all right out of the deal too with access to a fully funded, insured and fully maintained 3 litre Toyota with a fuel card. Just about the only proviso was that Tim couldn't use that taxpayer car for business.
During 2006 Ms Gillard chose a Toyota Avalon VKI Automatic sedan with a 2.995CC motor, silver in colour, Victorian rego TEX 739.
Ms Gillard was entitled to drive the car, and to nominate other authorised drivers for approval.
A "Nomination of driver for private plated electorate vehicle" form that added the name Tim Mathieson to the list of people authorised to drive the vehicle was signed Julia Gillard and dated 2 May, 2006.
On 16 August 2006 another person was added to the list, the box "ADD the following" is ticked, but the name of the person added to Gillard and Mathieson as an authorised driver has been redacted under S.22 of the FOI legislation as "Exempt" matter (probably because the person is a public servant and the release of his/her name is exempted from FOI).
Yesterday we published the Information Commissioner's report on the FOI issues raised by Hedley Thomas.
Here then is the driver authorisation for the unnamed person, dated 16 August, 2006, probably an employed staffer on the public payroll.
So from 2 May, 2006, Gillard and Mathieson were authorised to drive and on 16 August, one other (probably a staffer) is added.
On 29 August, 2006 two Motor Vehicle Insurance Claim Forms were submitted to Lumley General Insurance.
The two claims describe;
1. An "accident" purported to have occured at 10PM, 30 June, 2006 at 4/8 or 418 Small Street Hampton Victoria in which Ms Gillard, the reported driver, "in a small narrow back alley (I) scraped the side of the car on a pole" causing "small dents and scraped paintwork on driver's side".
2. On approximately 16 July, with Julia Gillard as the driver, the "windscreen developed a crack - no reason just started cracking and getting bigger."
So the prang on 30 June and the cracked windscreen getting bigger from 16 July are reported with an insurance claim on 29 August and Julia Gillard made a Declaration on each form as the Driver:
I declare that use of the vehicle was authorised and the information contained in this form is true in every respect.
(Julia Gillard's signature appears below the declaration above the words Signature of Driver)
The Australian Government guidelines for members private plated cars says this about accidents:
Accidents
The LeasePlan Accident Management card, located in the vehicle’s glove box, has details of what to do and who to call in the event of an accident.
All damage to the vehicle, however minor must be reported and repaired promptly
And the Leaseplan agreement is even more specific.
These are pretty normal requirements - if you have a prang and damage the vehicle, you've got to report it straight away and get it fixed asap.
On 31 August, 2006, Lumley General Insurance acknowledged receipt of the two accident reports for Ms Gillard's car (submitted 29 August 2006). Lumley's nominated 8 repairers, explained how to get a loan car and advised Ms Gillard's staff to arrange repairs.
On 12 September Lumley's followed up again noting that despite their advice about how and where to get the car fixed, it still hadn't been attended to.
On 25 September Lumley's sent another stern letter reiterating the terms and requirements for the car to be fixed.
From the date in May which appears on the form listing Mr Mathieson as an authorised driver until 25 September when the Lumley's 3rd chaser arrived Ms Gillard was present in Canberra sitting in our Parliament on the usual extensive range of parliamentary sessions and presumably she flew from Melbourne to Canberra. She'd have no use of the car then, it would presumably be in Melbourne without her.
Winter (Budget) session
- 9th May – Budget, Both Houses sit
- 10th to 11th May – Both Houses sit
- 22th to 25th May – Only House of Representatives sits, Senate Budget Estimates
- 29th May to 1st June – Only House of Representatives sits, Senate Budget Estimates
- 12th June – Queen's birthday (Public Holiday)
- 13th to 15th June – Both Houses sit
- 16th June - Only Senate Sits
- 19th June – Both Houses sit
- 20th June – Senate 2/3 Cut Off, Both Houses sit
- 21st to 22nd June – Both Houses sit
Spring session
- 8th to 10th August – Both Houses sit
- 14th to 17th August – Both Houses sit
- 4th to 5th September – Both Houses sit
- 6th September – Both Houses sit, Senate 2/3 Cut Off
- 7th September – Both Houses sit
- 11th to 14th September – Both Houses sit
- 2nd October – Labour Day (public holiday)
According to Mr Mathieson's Wikipedia entry, the timing of his entanglement with Ms Gillard is this:
They began dating in March 2006 and became partners in 2007.[1] After leaving Heading Out, Mathieson returned to Shepparton and established Tim Mathieson Hair with financial support from his father and brother. However, in 2006 he returned to Melbourne,[6] where he worked as a sales representative for PPS Hairwear, a hair products company.
He was a sales rep for PPS Hairwear in 2006.
Mr Mathieson had a bit of form for poor driving. Here's a report from the News Limited press dated August 2010, when Mr Mathieson was "on the verge of moving in to the Lodge".
JULIA Gillard's boyfriend was arrested by police for
drink-driving four times over the legal limit after smashing his sports car
into the carport of a house.
The Sunday Telegraph has uncovered court documents that
reveal that Tim Mathieson - "the first de facto" - was banned from
driving for 16 months after the crash.
Despite previously claiming to have lost his licence in 2001
for about eight months over the drink-driving charge, documents show the
incident was much more serious and recent.
Mr Mathieson was charged on May 16, 2003, with driving under
the influence of liquor at Simpsons Rd, Elanora, on the southern part of the
Gold Coast. He was taken to the Palm Beach police station where a blood alcohol
test taken just before 3am recorded a reading of 0.211 per cent - four times
the legal limit.
Mr Mathieson fronted Coolangatta Magistrates' Court on June
5, 2003, where he pleaded guilty to the charge and was fined $1500 by
Magistrate Jennifer Batts and disqualified from driving for 16 months.
Mr Mathieson had been driving his Alfa Romeo when he lost
control of the vehicle and hit the carport of a house.
It was reported on Friday that Mr Mathieson, now selling
real estate for developer Ubertas in Melbourne, was caught speeding and running
a red light earlier this year in the Prime Minister's taxpayer-funded private
car.
With Mr Mathieson, 53, on the verge of moving into The Lodge
- the first de facto partner of a Prime Minister to do so - his background has
come under greater scrutiny.
Julia was in Canberra being busy quite a lot. Tim and Julia came to some arrangement in March 2006 about their relationship, then in May Tim was added to the list of authorised drivers for TEX 739 the silver 3 litre Toyota Avalon sedan that clocked up about 25,000 Ks and whose windscreen one day in July when Julia was driving "developed a crack - no reason just started cracking and getting bigger". (Bad enough to get repaired, but not for 2.5 months later).
Keep in mind the car could be used for private purposes but not for any business purposes (like doing a country round floggin' hair care product) because as the Liberal in the Victorian State Parliament Mr Shaw knows, that's verboten and could lead to serious trouble.
So, let's go to some actual documents.
Here is Julia Gillard's Insurance Claim Form and accident report with her Declaration about the accident that happened 30 June 2006 at 10PM precisely but didn't get reported until 29 August 2006. 30 June was a good date because it was a non-sitting period, a Friday night and there will be oodles of evidence that Julia was there on that date.
I'll leave the evidentiary forensic analysis on handwriting to the experts. Here's my layman's go at it, having reviewed more than my share of Gillard's hand-writing.
Two people have written on this form. Here is what I say is Julia Gillard's handwriting.
It's a little strange that someone else wrote in the date the "accident" happened, particularly because Ms Gillard's recollection of everything else, the precise street address, the road surface of the small narrow back alley, the clear weather at the time - all of that was just crystal clear. Just the date on which it all lined up, that she was in town, down at 418 Small Street Hampton.
Only there is no 418 Small Street Hampton, must have meant unit 4/8 Small Street. If she did, then it's gone too, because there's A 6 Small Street, then units at 10 Small Street, but 8 has disappeared. Maybe this alley next door to 10 Small Street is what Ms Gillard was thinking about.
So here's the bit of the form with the other handwriting that filled in the date.
On 18 May, 2007 Ms Gillard was interviewed extensively by Davi Valent and this story was published in Melbourne's The Age newspaper.
"We need good industrial policy, not tariffs. Not even Toyota asks for tariffs," she says firmly, thinking perhaps of a recent meeting with Toyota executives who were stunned that Gillard managed to ding her late-model car despite its parking sensors. ("A bollard jumped out at me," she explained.)
More of the 2007 bollard later - that story from early 2007 goes on to record these details:
For the first time in her life, she's with a man who does not breathe politics. Tim Mathieson, a sales representative for PPS Hairwear products, doesn't fit the same mould as her other big loves (university sweetheart Michael O'Connor and 1990s squeeze Bruce Wilson were both union officials; Craig Emerson, her boyfriend in 2002, is a Queensland federal MP). "It's just the way it's worked out," says Gillard.
"In the heady days of student politics it wouldn't have occurred to you to have a relationship with someone outside of politics because it was so intense and so much of your life." Strangely, the closer she's got to real power, the easier it has been to love someone who isn't involved in that world. "It's the right thing at the right time," she says.
Part of what makes Mathieson, 50, right is that he doesn't care to talk about the finer points of IR over dinner. "I'm sort of a lightweight in that area anyway," he says. "She's talking about that with high intellects all day, every day. We just talk about life stuff or joke around. She can switch off."
Mathieson has been the subject of snide whispers. What does she see in this hairdresser? Shepparton-born Mathieson has been cutting hair on and off for 25 years, including at his own salons in Shepparton and on the Gold Coast. He spent much of the 1990s in San Francisco where he and an old Shepp mate exported vintage Levi's and supplied marble interiors.
In 2004, he was head stylist at Fitzroy's Heading Out salon and it was there he first chatted with Gillard when she came for appointments with another stylist. "There was a nice connection there," he says. They bumped into each other on a Collins Street tram just after the 2004 election defeat and "there was a bit of a nice spark", but Mathieson moved back to Shepparton to run a salon two weeks later and Gillard had a busy few months considering whether to run for the Labor Party leadership.
They didn't meet again for a year, when Mathieson moved back to Melbourne and gave her a call. Their first mineral-water-only meeting was over lunch at Enoteca Vino Bar in Carlton North ("I got chastised by her friends - 'What! He didn't buy you any wine? Get rid of him...'," says Mathieson.) They saw Syriana at Cinema Nova, in Carlton, the next week. By their third date, at Fitzroy's Provincial Hotel, the spark had turned into a bit of a flame. "It's nice to meet a girl who's grounded. I hate spin and there's no pretence about her in any way," he says.
Mathieson is divorced and has one daughter, Sherri, 22, who works in Melbourne as a beautician. The two women get on well. "Sherri has done Julia's make-up for a photo shoot and I think we're going to the opening of the netball," he says. Gillard doesn't see herself as a step-mum. "No, I wouldn't say that," she says. "She's an independent adult. We see a little bit of her but she's got better things to do with her life than hang out with a couple of old people." Having Sherri on the scene doesn't seem to have awakened a desperate hunger for children. "It's human to ponder it but not with a sense of anxiety and regret," says Gillard.
The couple don't share a house. He lives in Northcote with "two crazy guys", old schoolmates who work in construction. "I've joked that living with me is a bit of an academic concept," says Gillard, who is usually in Melbourne just a couple of nights a week. "We're used to it. It's our version of normal."
When she does come home, the sleepovers happen at her place. Mathieson will often have dinner ready. "Fresh vegie soups and pastas, a whole lot of vegetables and beans. She eats out all week so it's nice for her to come back to something healthy," he says. Home life is prosaic: sleeping in, strolls along Altona beach, coffees out, and evenings in front of the telly (she likes The Bill, he likes motor racing). Gillard doesn't find switching gears hard. "It doesn't take much for me to feel relaxed and away from it," she says. "We dag out, fairly significantly, pretty quickly."
Friends say that Gillard is content. "He seems to have given her a bit of a stronger grounding," says Julie Ligeti, a mate from student politics days who is now chief of staff to Victorian Attorney-General Rob Hulls. Robyn McLeod, who has been close to Gillard for 15 years, says, "They're a very grounded, sensible couple, dealing with an extraordinary time in her career." She compares the situation to a couple of years ago: "Julia wasn't in a relationship and my marriage was ending and we'd sit around talking about blokes.
She said, 'Men, they're just net energy takers.' And we'd talk about whether we had time for them or not." She's glad Gillard has made time for Tim Mathieson. "I love seeing her so happy."
Maybe Robyn McLeod is from the Melbourne Bayside suburb McLeods. Here is the Victorian Government Gazette of January this year advising persons with a claim on the estate of the late Mrs Gwendoline McLeod to get in touch with the lawyer Peter McLeod of 31 Small Street Hampton - why according to Google Earth, that's just opposite the little lane near 10 Small Street, where Ms Gillard was driving the silver Toyota on the night of [insert date later] when as she declares she pranged it.
Astute observers of The AWU Scandal may recognise Ms McLeod's cameo with Melbourne Water and later with the Rann Government's water machinations.
Julie Ligetti too has remained firmly on the scene. 4 years after Tim started driving around Victoria flogging hair care product, Julia Gillard and Ms Ligetti were living together in a lovely flat in Canberra.
Here's how Michelle Grattan told the story on 3 July, 2010:
While Gillard's work life is a hotbed of change, at least at a personal level she's keeping some continuity until the election, staying in her Canberra flat which she shares with her friend Julie Ligeti, chief of staff to a minister, Brendan O'Connor. Assuming she's re-elected, she will be moving into The Lodge when the garden is in its spring glory.
Julie Ligetti went on to be the Federal Government liaison manager at the law firm Slater and Gordon once Julia moved in to the Lodge with Tim.
Hedley has written of a tip from an informant that led him to making the sort of detailed and persistent application under FOI laws that have seen the release of these and many more documents.
There's a range of traffic infringements and more traffic accidents too. I'll try to take a close look at the other prangs for which Ms Gillard has declared she was the driver.
Keep checking back during the day.