This is irresponsibly incomplete reporting from the Australian Financial Review which approaches the threshold for a Press Council finding against the publication.  

The newspaper's report is misleading, deceptive and incomplete in a matter of importance in which a newspaper with the AFR's resources has no excuses for advancing only one side.  It does not rebutt Wilson's manifestly self-serving and dissembling statements and it fails to report the relevant facts of:

• A current, lengthy and well-resourced police investigation that has produced new evidence denied to previous investigators.
• The Victoria Police search warrant executed on Ms Gillard's former law office at Slater and Gordon, naming her and Wilson.
• Detective Sergeant Ross MITCHELL's wholly successful application to the Magistrates' Court of Victoria at Melbourne for a judicial finding that the documents seized from Slater and Gordon were created in the furtherance of fraud.
• The Chief Magistrate of Victoria's ruling and 12 page written Reasons for Judgement, including his naming Wilson as the chief suspect in a well-advanced police investigation contemplating charges including conspiracy to cheat and defraud.
• The Chief Magistrate's finding that in every instance, the documents created at Slater and Gordon solicitors in this matter, including Ms Gillard's written objects of the AWU-WRA were created in the furtherance of fraud.
• The Chief Magistrate's recital of the evidence of two senior Thiess executives and the national secretary of the AWU at the relevant time (now a judicial officer appointed to each of Fair Work Australia and the NSW IRC) who in sworn evidence describe extensive deception and fraud.
• The Chief Magistrate's finding that a named co-offender who acted in concert with Wilson, that is Ralph Blewitt was a witness of credit whose evidence was corroborated and against whose evidence the Chief Magistrate found nothing by way of rebuttal.
• The Chief Magistrate's disclosure that Victoria Police have formed the belief that Wilson, Blewitt and others committed serious indictable offences and that the process in train is being conducted with the intention of bringing charged persons before a court of competent jurisdiction to answer charges including theft by deception, receiving secret commissions, making and using false instruments and conspiracy to cheat and defraud.
• The Chief Magistrate's remarks in relation to Wilson's attempt at exculpatory statements in an interview with the ABC's 7.30 program.

Wilson is the prime suspect in a complex and concealed fraud - not an authority on whether or not Australia should have a Royal Commission of Enquiry into matters including his own alleged criminality.   In this article he is permitted to characterise the Victoria Police investigation into himself as a political issue - and there is no rebuttal from Victoria Police.

Former union boss Bruce Wilson denies corruption

JAMES MASSOLA Political correspondent

One of the key players in the Australian Workers Union slush fund scandal, Julia Gillard’s former boyfriend Bruce Wilson, says he does not fear a Royal Commission at which he could be a key witness.

The federal government is poised to launch a Royal Commission into union “slush funds” and financial management, in another move designed to place pressure on the Labor Party’s allies in the union movement.

Government sources said federal cabinet will thrash out the details of the commission in the new year. The names of who will chair the body are already under consideration.

It would examine recent union scandals, such as the misuse of money at the Health Services Union and the Australian Workers Union Workplace Reform Association that former AWU leader Bruce Wilson allegedly established as a slush fund in the 1990s with the assistance of Ms Gillard, who was a lawyer at the time. She has denied any wrong­doing over the legal work she did for Mr Wilson. The Melbourne Magistrates court ordered the release of documents relating to the matter to Victorian police this week.

Mr Wilson, who would likely be called to give evidence to the commission, criticised what he said ­were “conspiracy theorists” in the ­Coalition ­government.

“I just think that all of this stuff was investigated close to 20 years ago by any number of authorities. They didn’t find anything and they dropped the investigation. The matter was then turned into a political issue, it is being pursued as a political issue, the timing of that was as soon as Julia Gillard became a prominent politician,” he said.

“In terms of the Royal Commission, what else do you expect from the ­Liberal Party? This was investigated by WA police, by the Victorian police, way back in 1995 and they dropped it; it’s just a dead issue.”

The AFR found space to quote the ACTU - but its failure to quote the Chief Magistrate's Ruling is unforgivable.

Australian Council of Trade Unions national secretary Dave Oliver said the move was “an absolute disgrace”.

“The government has done this on the day they should be focused on the 50,000 workers whose jobs they sunk. Frankly this is a distraction from a ­government who is in real trouble on the issue of jobs and the future of manufacturing in this country,” he said.

The story is behind a paywell at the AFR here.