May I start with a resounding congratulations to everyone involved in "Max Ogden's" Workplace Reform Association and the conference and workshops around the country that it produced.

I have seldom seen an undertaking more ambitious than this.

This Workplace Reform Association Inc was the corporate entity that received and accounted for substantial grants and donations from corporate and government bodies, paid out substantial expenses and hosted a very large conference dedicated to the legitimate and then very current issue of workplace reform.

Barry O'Sullivan was the chair of the management committee, along with some names you'd recognise, Jenny George, Max Ogden and Neil Watson of Neil Watson and Associates (more on Neil later).

The sponsors included Qantas, Telecom Australia, SIO, Ericsson, Australia Post, Australian Airways, Alcatel, BHP and a range of government entities including the ACTU.

Max Ogden was a pivotal figure - and so was an impressive young lady Kate Nash, the Executive Director of "Workplace Australia" - the name given to their major conference in Melbourne, February 1991.

Here is a little of Kate Nash's 4 page preface to the 230 page book based on the conference's proceedings entitled "Designing the Future, Workplace Reform in Australia" (edited Kate Nash and Penny Thomson)

This extract from the Journal of Applied Behavioural Science will give you a little further insight into the conference and its design.

This was a meticulously organised and conducted event.   You don't have to agree with the outcomes to recognise the quality of the work in its preparation.

I'll post the financials for you shortly - in the interim here are a few of the names associated with the Incorporated Association that held its financials and the organisation of the event.

I think you know a bit of Max Ogden and his involvement in Socialist Forum.

Here's the organiser Neil Watson in an extract from his chapter in the book;

Neil Watson was a Foundation Member of Socialist Forum

- here's a record of some of the work that Neil, Max Ogden and Julia Gillard did together:

There's a brief record of a Kate Nash being accepted for membership of Socialist Forum too.

I should reiterate - the Workplace Australia Conference, the book, the Incorporated Association and everything that I have found associated with it seem to have been conducted in an exemplary fashion.

My interest in this is from the perspective of Ms Gillard's claim that in late 1991 and early 1992, Bruce Wilson and Ralph Blewitt from Western Australia just approached her out of the blue to seek her legal advice to incorporate an association for the purpose of raising and holding funds for Mr Wilson and his team's election campaigns as union officials.

In all those years of activity at Socialist Forum, rubbing shoulders in study groups and the like with the organisers of the Workplace Reform Association Inc and its conference, it strains credulity to be told that the AWU WRA was all Bruce and Ralph's idea.   Had it not been for the inclusion of the AWU name, the secrecy from her partners, the absence of a file, the correspondence with the WA  Corporate Affairs Commisioner, the absence of a bill, the negotiation of its business through a secret post office box, the power of attorney, the purchase of the house, the provision of a mortgage, the spontaneous home renovations at her own house, her statement when questioned that she could not rule out the association paying for those renovations and her statement that she set up a re-election slush fund - well maybe I'd believe her.

But Ms Gillard has said that she only acted on Mr Wilson and Mr Blewitt's instructions.   We shall see.

I'll be back shortly with the financials.