Former lawyers from Slater and Gordon circa August 1995 have reason to be nervous.

When Wilson was sprung with the Melbourne AWU account irregularities, no one thought to tell the AWU about the big-daddy, the workplace reform association.   Its existence was a tightly guarded secret.   Until August, 1995.

As you'll see, someone twigged at Slater and Gordon - and the firm acted quickly against Ms Gillard.   It just forgot about its real client, Wilson's victims and justice.

14 July, 1995 - Bruce Wilson attempts to empty AWU Members Welfare Assn account with $160,000 cheque - the cheque is stopped by the bank and Melb accounts are frozen.

4 August, 1995 - Bob Smith writes to confirm that Wilson faces internal charges and will be referred to police re the Melbourne AWU Members Welfare Assn account matters.

During the week of 7-11 August, 1995, there were frantic negotiations within the AWU.   

On Saturday, 12 August 1995 this story ran in The Age.

To reiterate, the AWU Workplace Reform Association remained secret, as did its role in the purchase of the house in Fitzroy.  

But something had rung the alarm bells at Slater and Gordon.

There was nothing in writing within the Blewitt conveyance file that mentioned the AWU Workplace Reform Association.

Yet on Monday, 14 August 1995 Gillard was interviewed about the conveyance file and quizzed about the AWU Workplace Reform Association by Nick Styant Browne and Geoff Shaw.   Gillard packed up, left the firm and did not work as a lawyer again.

There is only one link between the conveyance and the incorporation of the association.   And that is the $67,000 cheque that funded the house purchase.

Here is an extract from Gillard's recorded 11 September 1995 record of interview with Peter Gordon  

When Geoff and Nick came down and saw me about the conveyancing file, I must admit my recollection about the incorporation file was that I hadn't opened a file on system and that I had had some papers and at some point I had given the papers to (name redacted). I don't recall whether I said that to you but I remember having, I remember saying to Geoff I don't think I opened it on system to which Geoff then said, well, that will be easy enough to check. In the surrounding chaos, I must admit I didn't do anything to check whether or not I opened it on the system. I subsequently but relatively quickly thereafter went on a period of leave and, whilst I was focused on the issues surrounding this, I wasn't particularly focused about the file.

I said when -- to Leesha -- when I went on leave was one of the things I was doing when I was packing up, did she remember this file at all? And she said she did and when I came back from leave she said that it was, that it had been in the cabinet, that she'd found it, did I want it?

PG: Why wasn't it opened on the system?

JG: I don't think there's any great scientific explanation for that, I didn't have an intention to charge on it, and from time to time I've done bits of work on files that I haven't opened up where I've just done relatively small jobs for unions that I wasn't intending to charge for. Ordinarily they would be kept on the union's file.

We have a file for each union where we put little bits of free work or telephone attendances of advice we give, or they're kept on my personal file JEG general. This, this was a more substantial job than that and really ought to have been opened on system, but I think, well, I don't have a specific recollection of thinking to myself should I open it on system or shouldn't I open it on system, but apparently I didn't.

The Age's former editor at large Mark Baker reported an eye-witness account of the 14 August 1995 meeting between Gillard, Nick Styant Browne and Geoff Shaw for this article published in The Age.  

Gillard, then a salaried partner at Slater & Gordon, had been first challenged about her role in helping create the association and in assisting with the purchase of the Fitzroy unit at a meeting on 14 August, 1995, with Geoff Shaw and Nick Styant-Browne, an equity partner in charge of the firm's commercial department.

At that meeting Gillard confirmed she had not followed established procedures to open a formal file on the work done to incorporate the Workplace Reform Association. She had played down her role, claiming she had only given some advice about incorporation.

She also confirmed that she had drafted the power of attorney for Wilson without advising senior colleagues.

Gillard told Shaw and Styant-Browne that her unofficial file of paperwork relating to the Workplace Reform Association was no longer available as it had been passed on to someone outside the firm.

Immediately after that meeting, Gillard took leave and in her absence staff found the file in her office.

The Australian Workers Union Workplace Reform Association was not implicated in the troubles Wilson faced in Melbourne, nor was the Fitzroy house in Ralph Blewitt's name.   The tip to Slater and Gordon, then, is unlikely to have come from an external source, and certainly not the AWU which remained vulnerably ignorant.

Yet Nick Styant Browne and the GM Geoff Shaw went to see Gillard with the conveyance file in hand and had cause to ask her about the AWU Workplace Reform Association.

That day effectively marked the end of her career as an industrial lawyer.

The only trace of unequivocal documentary evidence linking the AWU to the Kerr Street Fitzroy purchase was one line on the Slater and Gordon trust account bank statement.   It showed the drawer of the cheque.   The AWU Worplace Reform Association.   But someone within Slater and Gordon had falsified the entry in the firm's General Ledger to show Ralph Blewitt as the provider of the funds.

Someone with something to hide.

Here is Ms Gillard in her recorded 11 September, 1995 departure interview.

PG: In your discussions with Blewitt and Wilson, when you were going around the traps looking at properties, do you recall whether there was a particular range, price range that they were interested in, that Blewitt was interested in?

JG: My recollection is he was looking around the $200,000 mark, a bit above in that range.

PG: Mmm Hmm. Did you ever make enquiries as to the source of those funds from his point of view?

JG: No, I just, from the discussions I had an understanding that he was going to put a deposit on and that he was interested in then having a negative-gearing arrangement for the rest so that he would get a tax break, so he was, I mean like one ordinarily does, he was going to have a deposit and a mortgage.

PG: You assumed he had the money.

JG: Oh, I assumed he had the money for the deposit, and

PG: and

JG: and to meet the mortgage repayments when they fell due.

PG: and, um

JG: I didn't have any specific knowledge of how much deposit he was intending to put on but just that he had the money to complete the transaction

PG: Or how much funds he had?

JG: Or how much funds he had but just that he had the money to complete the transaction.

PG: It's fair to say that your view was that if anything like all this fellow said is to be believed he's got a hairdressing business, he's got flats and he's a man of means who can fund a $200,000 purchase if he wants to

JG: Yes.

PG: Is that?

JG: Yeah, I hadn't . . .

PG: If you thought about it . . .

JG: To the extent that I thought about it, I hadn't made careful enquiry about his financial circumstances, he's a middle-aged man, he's on his second marriage. From what he says it's apparent his first marriage ended in circumstances where he didn't have much by way of ongoing relationship with the children and I understood that to be in the maintenance sense as well as the access sense.

He had worked here for the Timber Workers Union. He'd sort of chugged that in, cashed that up and usually union officials are worth a fair bit when they leave one union and go to another. He'd gone to Western Australia. His wife worked. So, you know, they weren't Mr and Mrs Onassis but they were relatively well positioned.

This is now getting very serious for anyone who knew about the source of funds.  

More soon.