We will have some more to say on this slush fund tomorrow.   Your comments most welcome.

Secret union fund rumour revived

Jeff Whalley, Geelong Advertiser, 24 October 2007

THE Coalition has ramped up its attacks on Corio Labor candidate Richard Marles, reviving questions over his links to a secretive union fund.

High ranking Liberal MP Andrew Robb yesterday said Kevin Rudd should demand Mr Marles step aside to protect the interests of voters in Corio.

''Mr Marles is alleged to have been a key player in a secret Transport Workers Union slush fund -- Transport 2020 -- when he and ALP National Assistant Secretary and Senate candidate David Feeney and Senator Stephen Conroy were all TWU officials,'' Mr Robb said.

Separate to Mr Robb's comments, the Geelong Advertiser yesterday received copies of the minutes of the first meeting of the Transport 2020 group, which took place on December 5, 1994.

In the minutes, one of the stated purposes of the Transport 2020 group was ''to pay the membership subscriptions to any trade union and the ALP (membership) of the members''.

Mr Marles is listed as the treasurer of the group.

After an attempt to register the company, the further correspondence with the Registrar of Incorporated Associations in April 11, 1995, shows that had been deleted from the business statement of purpose.

Mr Robb said Mr Marles needed to reveal if any ALP members had their memberships paid for by the fund and where the cash came from.

Mr Marles yesterday said ''not a cent'' of the cash from the organisation was spent on the Australian Labor Party.

''I'm not going to walk down this path of dirt and smear like the Liberal party,'' he said.

The attack comes as Mr Marles faces an unexpected challenge from former ALP MP Gavan O'Connor, who is now standing as an independent.

Labor hopefuls accused

Peter Jean, Herald-Sun, 25 October 2007

TWO prominent Victorian Labor candidates have been accused of being involved in a ''slush fund'' to pay membership fees of new ALP members.

Vocational and Further Education Minister Andrew Robb said yesterday Labor's candidate for Corio, Richard Marles, and Senate candidate David Feeney should be stood aside while their involvement in The Transport 2020 Association is investigated.

According to the minutes of the association's inaugural meeting on December 5, 1994, its purposes included to ''pay the membership subscriptions to any trade union and the ALP of the members''.

The Labor Party prohibits groups or individuals paying membership fees for others.

Mr Feeney last night denied doing anything wrong and said the association had never paid union or ALP membership fees for any individuals.

Mr Feeney is listed in the minutes as secretary of the association and Mr Marles as its treasurer.

Mr Robb called on Labor leader Kevin Rudd to take action against Mr Feeney and Mr Marles.

''By Labor's own rules Kevin Rudd should immediately demand that Mr Marles and Mr Feeney be stood aside while a full investigation is conducted to determine their probity,'' Mr Robb said.

''These are not the sort of candidates that the ALP should inflict on the people of Victoria.''

Mr Feeney said the organisation's constitution did not refer to paying membership fees because the founders had been advised it was not legal.

He said the association had existed only to support candidates in Transport Workers Union elections.

''This is an organisation that ceased to exist in 1999. It has never had any direct or indirect dealings with the ALP,'' Mr Feeney said.

The controversy came as the Herald Sun discovered a smear campaign against prominent unionist Bill Shorten.

A two-page pamphlet making allegations against Mr Shorten circulated last night.

Mr Marles did not return Herald Sun calls last night.

Ex-Labor MP Gavan O'Connor is standing as an independent against Mr Marles.

Mr Marles recently admitted keeping personal dossiers on Labor Party branch members in Geelong.

IS THIS MAN THE FUTURE OF THE ALP?

Stephen Long with Mark Skulley, AFR, 8 June 2002, page 21

He runs one of Australia's oldest unions but also mixes with Melbourne's business elite. Bill Shorten is a unionist with a difference and already, at just 35, is acquiring the sorts of friends and enemies that make him a rising star.

For a man steeped in the egalitarian politics of the labour movement, Bill Shorten seems impressed by celebrity. Drinking boutique Japanese beer at a hip bar in downtown Melbourne, the national secretary of Australia's oldest blue-collar union waves across the room to broadcaster Virginia Trioli and casts a glance in the direction of Claudia Karvan, who stands alongside other cast members from the TV soap The Secret Life of Us. "Did you notice David Wenham sitting over there?" he says and, met with a blank look, prompts: "SeaChange Diver Dan."

Shorten's wife, Debbie, is a block away at the launch of Australian Fashion Week in the five-star Westin Hotel. She meets him later with tickets to the after-show party.

Hours earlier, Shorten was at an aluminium smelter at Portland in the state's south-east, on the stump, rousing the workers. He's still wearing a crushed chambray shirt with "Australian Workers Union" embossed on the pocket, and faded blue chinos. The next day he's up before dawn to address a mass meeting of workers, before flying to Canberra for a summit on the steel industry.

Welcome to the public life of Bill Shorten, friend of cardboard box king Dick Pratt, son-in-law of former Liberal Party MP Julian Beale, leader of shearers, labourers and miners, rising star of the ALP.

In the eyes of many, Shorten is an enigma: a Jesuit-educated Catholic from the Labor Right who sides with militant unions from the hard Left in industrial disputes and ALP forums; a committed Labor man who married into a Liberal Party dynasty and boasts allies and friends among the Melbourne business elite.

There is a key to the seeming contradiction. Shorten is a pragmatist willing to build alliances where he perceives a need or an advantage. Some say he has made Faustian trade-offs that could bring him undone. But even critics concede that Shorten's talents are formidable, his achievements impressive.

When he joined the AWU as a trainee organiser in Victoria eight years ago, it was divided, in debt and haemhorraging members. Outside of Queensland, demise seemed inevitable for the once proud union, born out of the shearers' strikes of the 1890s.

Now the AWU is again a force, industrially and politically. That's largely due to Shorten, who gave up his preselection for a seat in the Victorian Parliament to take on the leadership of its state branch four years ago.

Along the way, he's been an adviser to Neil Pope, who was minister for industrial relations in the Cain Government, and a labour lawyer, and has completed an MBA. Quite a list of achievements for a man who turned 35 last month and graduated with a law degree from Monash University only 10 years ago.

For years he has been touted as a future prime minister and he looks set to gain the presidency of the Victorian ALP. But outside the tribal worlds of the trade union movement and the Labor Party, his career had drawn little notice until last week, when it provoked a split in the ALP's Victorian Labor Unity faction power base of the State Premier, Steve Bracks, and the federal Opposition Leader, Simon Crean.

The fracturing on the Right was the culmination of a quiet coup over the past few years which had seen Shorten and his best mates gradually gain the numbers to control the faction. The advance of this young guard has sidelined Greg Sword, 54, the federal president of the ALP and the boss of the National Union of Workers, who had dominated the Labor Right in Victoria for years.

Last week, Sword spat the dummy and withdrew from Labor Unity, accusing Shorten of siding with hard Left militants and Shorten's close friend, Victorian ALP secretary David Feeney, of undermining him.

The ramifications of this rift are big: it means the right wing of the ALP in Victoria no longer has the numbers to dominate the party.

The Right's warring camps are being forced into shifting alliances with sub-factions of the Left. This has profound implications for policy and preselections in the ALP.

How all this will pan out is anyone's guess, but it might just be the harbinger of a generational change. Shorten is part of a triumvirate of emerging leaders in the right wing of the Victorian ALP. It includes Feeney, 31, and Richard Marles, 34, the assistant secretary of the ACTU. These young men shared formative years together and their ties are strong.

More than a decade ago, while attending Melbourne University, Feeney and Marles shared a house at Flemington. The cut and thrust of student politics was glue for their friendship. When Feeney turned 21, he chose Marles to give the speech at his birthday party. Shorten, who attended Monash, was a mere acquaintance at this time, but he formed a close friendship with Marles in the early 1990s when they did their articles at rival labour law firms Marles at Slater & Gordon, Shorten at Maurice Blackburn.

They entered the union movement within weeks of each other: Shorten as an organiser with the AWU, Marles as a legal officer with the Transport Workers Union, where Feeney was also employed.

Shorten was best man at Feeney's recent wedding, where the lesson was read by Labor senator Steve Conroy. Marles was best man two years ago when Shorten married Debbie Beale at a wedding attended by luminaries of politics from both sides Victorian Liberal powerbroker Michael Kroger, Bracks, and Conroy as well as business doyens like Pratt, who is a close friend of the Beales.

A few months earlier, Pratt had hosted the young couple's engagement party at his historic mansion, Raheen which was once home to the Catholic archbishops of Melbourne and thrilled the guests by singing vaudeville hits to an accompanying piano.

These friendships across the divide of capital and labour appal traditionalists, but they indicate one of Shorten's key strengths: he can communicate comfortably with people from the shop floor to the boardroom. He is also willing to disregard traditional enmities between the Left and the Right.

Shorten rebuilt the union by recruiting young organisers who shared his formidable skill for recruiting non-union workers; using his business acumen to reign in costs; and making pragmatic deals with hard Left Victorian unionists such as metalworkers boss Craig Johnston, who was charged last year with riot, affray, burglary, criminal damage and aggravated burglary after leading an alleged "run through" at the Melbourne offices of labour hire company Skilled Engineering.

Some say it has left Shorten with a debt to the militants. Last year he joined a delegation of Left union officials that met separately with the ACTU secretary, Greg Combet and Tim Pallas, chief adviser to Bracks, to lobby on behalf of Johnston and the so-called "Skilled Six".

He concedes it was a "lapse of judgement", and he withdrew his support once he learnt more about the incident. "No-one sees me for one second to have any meaningful affection or political commonality with Craig Johnston," Shorten says. "It is sheer crap." But it damaged his reputation, and gave ammunition to political enemies such as Sword.

Is Shorten destined for politics? It's well known he wants to enter Parliament via the safe seat of Maribyrnong but he isn't planning to jump soon. He says he will stand for re-election as AWU national secretary in 2005 and has committed to serve out most of that term."When I turn 40, I'll consider what I should do," paraphrasing the present Prime Minister. Some believe his future is assured. Some believe he's too clever by half.

It's a Labor three for all

Ellen Whinnett, Herald-Sun, 28 November 2007, page 12

LABOR'S three amigos -- Bill Shorten, Richard Marles and David Feeney -- will fulfil a 20-year dream by entering Federal Parliament together.

The trio, the most formidable power bloc in the Victorian Labor Party, have worked to become MPs since they became active members of the Labor Party in the 1980s and ran student politics in the early '90s.

They were best men and groomsmen at each other's weddings, spoke at their 21st and 40th birthday parties and established the Right-wing Labor Unity faction as the most powerful in Victoria.

On Saturday, Mr Shorten was elected as member for Maribyrnong, Mr Marles won Corio and Mr Feeney won a seat in the Senate.

And with Mr Shorten touted as a possibility for a place in the new Rudd Government ministry, it seems the trio's long-held plans have finally come together.

The closest they came in the past to an elected job was when Mr Shorten was given preselection for a safe seat in the 1999 state election.

He turned his back on a guaranteed ministry and possible premiership to continue to build his career at the Australian Workers Union.

Mr Shorten, 40, and Mr Feeney, 37, were reluctant to comment yesterday, but Mr Marles, 40, was delighted the three friends had started their parliamentary careers together.

''I think it's a sweet moment for all of us,'' he said.

''We have been doing politics together for a very long time. It's certainly been an enduring friendship. We mean a lot to each other.

''It makes this event much more special for the fact it's with Dave and Bill.''

Their early history was steeped in Labor.

Mr Feeney and Mr Marles became friends in their days at the University of Melbourne, where they were active in student politics through the Labor Club, and later through the Centre Forum group, founded by Mr Feeney.

Mr Marles was president of the university's student representative council when Mr Feeney arrived several years later.

At the same time, Mr Shorten was rising through the Young Labor ranks. Based at Monash, he led Network, which included young Laborites such as Martin Pakula, now an Upper House MP, and later Tim Holding, Victoria's Water Minister.

Network and Centre Forum were considered arch-rivals, but a falling out between Mr Shorten and other Network members led him to end hostilities with Mr Feeney and join him at Centre Forum.

Remember we met some "random men in the pub" after a certain crook got 7.5 years?

Yesterday I met a random man in a park on the south coast with Hugh and Caroline.   We were fascinated by this exceptionally stable aerial drone with a GoPro camera suspended on an independently stabilised gimbal.

We spoke with "random man in the park" who volunteers in the local Surf Life Saving Club.

Doubtful John I can think of many times that a live video stream coming from a quiet eye in the sky might have been very useful.   Good to know that these things are around when needed and that community minded bods are out and about!

TJF.  

Hedley Thomas in The Australian today reports on former ACTU chief Martin Ferguson and his willingness to assist the royal commission into union corruption.

Former Gillard minister Martin Ferguson to reveal knowledge of AWU slush fund

FORMER union boss and retired cabinet minister Martin Ferguson is offering to tell the national royal commission into union corruption his knowledge of controversial payments, key witnesses and other information in the AWU slush fund scandal that has dogged the Labor Party and Julia Gillard.

Mr Ferguson told The Australian that, if asked under oath, he would provide information including details revealed to him recently by a former Melbourne builder, Kon Spyridis, payments to whom have been part of an ongoing investigation by Victoria Police’s Fraud Squad into hundreds of thousands of dollars that flowed in and out of the slush fund.

Mr Ferguson, who was head of the ACTU when the slush fund was operating without his knowledge, said: “I am disturbed by the accounts of the slush fund in question and the involvement in it of both union and employer representatives.

“I’m concerned about the ­operation of that fund — the way it was operated — and the people from the union and business who were connected to it. It is fair to say that I have taken more of an interest in it in recent years. When the issues arose again (in 2012), I went and double-checked dates to check on certain things, including what positions I held at the time. It is not a question of whether I welcome the royal commission or not. There is an absolute obligation on the union movement to clean up its house. There is an obligation on the unions to put their house in order.’’

Mr Ferguson said Mr Spyridis, a constituent in the parliamentarian’s Melbourne electorate of Batman until his retirement at the last election, had recently disclosed information about the work he had performed for the AWU and Ms Gillard. There is no allegation of wrongdoing by Mr Spyridis.

“He came to my office for help on a migration matter because I was the local member,’’ Mr Ferguson said.

“He did raise with me the question of his previous involvement with the AWU and he indicated to me that he was being upfront about it, having done work on the AWU’s offices and some private work (at Ms Gillard’s house).

“I am not prepared to go into these details now. They are his interpretation of events. I would take seriously my obligations to talk to the inquiry if asked. I have absolute confidence in the integrity of the royal commissioner.’’

Ms Gillard has told journalists she paid for the renovations. However, in a tape-recorded 1995 interview during an internal investigation by her then employer, law firm Slater & Gordon, she said she could not rule out whether union money or slush fund money went into the cottage, saying “but I can’t see how it’s happened’’.

She added that “a series of tradespeople came in and did the renovation’’ on the instructions of AWU organiser Jim Collins.

Her former legal client, Mr Blewitt, a self-confessed corrupt union bagman, has told Victoria Police that he was directed by Mr Wilson to use slush fund cash to pay for renovations at her home.

Bank records indicate that Mr Spyridis received bank cheques from at least one of the slush funds controlled by Mr Wilson. Mr Spyridis has previously said: “I get my money and that’s it.’’

I was with a lawyer in Melbourne in November 2012 and we both happened to see Mr Ferguson walking towards us - it was the day that Ralph Blewitt made his statement to Victoria Police and the issue of Julia Gillard's involvement in The AWU Scandal was very prominent in the news.   I've been sent this video that an onlooker took - small world huh!

Mr Ferguson confirmed that he had conducted an interview with Julia Gillard prior to the Labor Party pre-selecting her for the seat of Lalor.   I'll bet he wishes he knew then what he knows now.

I know that Mr Spyridis was paid for work that he did at Julia Gillard's home in Abbotsford - that is the "And Bruce, while I was away decided that I should just get it done" renovations.

This cheque and the bank teller's notation on the back of it gives some insight into some cash flows that came from one of Wilson's corruptly operated bank accounts.

So $10,000 to the builder Kon Spyridis and $5,000 in cash.   Here's the Daily Telegraph from November 2012

With the 20-year-old affair threatening to overshadow the work of government, a fiery Ms Gillard addressed questions about the fund and her relationship with the disgraced Bruce Wilson.

The PM revealed she had consulted the Commonwealth Bank and had hoped to release her account transaction record but the bank only kept them for seven years.

Former AWU official Wayne Hem signed a statutory declaration claiming that Mr Wilson, after a night at a casino, asked him to put the money in Ms Gillard's bank account in mid-1995.

Mr Hem said in 1996 he told Ian Cambridge, then AWU secretary and now a Fair Work Australia Commissioner, of the alleged transaction.

When asked about Mr Hem's claim, Mr Wilson said at the weekend: "It's possible, but I don't specifically recall."

At the time Mr Hem said he made the deposit on behalf of Mr Wilson. Ms Gillard was a Slater & Gordon partner and would have been earning about $80,000 a year.

While she said yesterday she did not recall the money being put in her account, she said that, even if Mr Wilson had given her $5000 - which today would be worth more than $8100 - it would not be wrong. She also dismissed stories about the AWU affair, claiming Australians "don't understand" them. Ms Gillard said: "On the day that claim came out publicly I referred to it as smear because it is a matter associated with my personal life.

"Whilst I'm going to answer your question, I just ask you for one moment to assume that that is true, that $5000 was put in my bank account by a person I was then in a relationship with, who the witness involved said had had a big night out at the casino. Can you piece together for me the personal wrongdoing involved in that? I doubt you can.

"On the actual assertion, I do not to the best of my knowledge, remember $5000 being put in my account."

Ms Gillard said she typically was surprised by how little money she had when she used an ATM "rather than happily surprised that there is extra".

"I do not have a memory of this money going into my account. However, it is a long time ago. So I have taken steps to try and check," she said of her approach to the Commonwealth Bank.

She described the financial relationship between herself and Mr Wilson as "garden variety" for a couple and there was not "lots of money around or lots of benefits I somehow couldn't explain."

"Nothing happened in the course of my relationship with Mr Wilson about who paid for what that you would say was in any way unusual for people in a relationship. We'd go for dinner, sometimes he'd pay, sometimes I'd pay, sometimes we'd split the bill," she said.

Ms Gillard said she ended the relationship with Mr Wilson when she heard rumours of problems within the union.

She faced questions about why she hadn't alerted the AWU around the same time of the slush fund for which she had provided legal advice for its incorporation but said she had no knowledge of its accounts or how it was used.

"You can't report things you do not know. I did not know about transactions on the accounts of the AWU workplace relations association," she said.

In parliament, Deputy Opposition Leader Julie Bishop used Question Time to focus on whether Ms Gillard had satisfied herself the establishment of the association did not breach AWU internal rules.

Ms Gillard repeated that her role was to provide legal advice to the two officials seeking to register their association, which was to be used for union election campaigning, and she had no dealings with the broader union executive.

Earlier, Ms Gillard had said she was aware of rumours - which she vigorously denied - that she received money from the union for home renovations. Ms Gillard told Slater & Gordon in an interview in September 1995 she had paid the builder $2000 and was "making arrangements to get $1780 ... to pay the rest". The transcript shows she was financially strained at the time with a mortgage and a personal loan - and had taken an advance on her salary.

What has happened to the National Party in NSW?

At a time when the bush in Australia has some real issues and needs strong, loud, and authentic voices, what the hell are they doing?

The once 'party for the country' seems to have solidly abandoned its conservative country roots and risks gradually becoming a ship of convenience for left leaning inner city trendies.

It was only a handful of years ago that the Nats largely saved Australia from an early Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS).

Remember that?

Late 2009 and Malcolm Turnbull was Opposition Leader. Fools in the Coalition were on the verge of teaming up with Kevin07 to support a quick start ETS.

Turnbull was rolled after Nationals like Barnaby Joyce and Fiona Nash inspired Liberals to wake up and grow a spine.

Within weeks, Tony Abbott was Opposition Leader and here we are today.

Typically, you've always been able to count on people from the bush to truly read the mood of the country.

But something is wrong.

On Friday afternoon the Nats in NSW showed they had lost their way. They pre-selected a city based, lefty ex-Liberal, who doesn't have a drivers licence and is a political gamer to lead the party's Upper House ticket for the NSW election next year.

Ben Franklin is his name. Currently their state director but he could easily be at home in the Liberals or Labor. He is known around the NSW parliament as a classic political animal. The National Party is just where he is today.

He lives at Kirribilli in lower North Shore Sydney and figured out 'doing the numbers' when he was President of the Young Liberals.

Franklin is thought of as a 'wet' or a lefty. Certainly not the kind of bloke who'd really know much about the plight of people on the land.

So what are they doing giving him top pre-selection?

Franklin knocked out of the way a real-deal kind of bloke called John Williams who lives in Broken Hill.

Williams has run a business in a country town and has represented one of the largest electorates in the country from The Murray to the Queensland border. He is known to fly a light plane to get around his electorate.

Another MP, Melinda Pavey was also knocked out of the way. She's an ex-family business operator who has a young family living on the North Coast. She oversees Rural Health for the NSW Government.

Franklin's rise to the top is exactly not what the National Party leadership in NSW wanted. It goes against the wishes of Deputy Premier Andrew Stoner.

I appreciate that internal party politics is not everyone's cup of tea - but it strikes me as sad that even the National Party has become just another way for ambitious young city types to get into parliament.

I'm surprised but pleased to see that Fairfax's lawyers have mellowed somewhat and will now allow the Australian Financial Review to publish these comments of mine about Julia Gillard.

Gillard, the lying, thieving, conniving, home-wrecking common offender. I hope that she’s arrested, put through the Watch-House book, photographed, finger-printed, charged in the Watch-House or put in the van and taken to a Magistrates’ Court to be charged, bailed with conditions, committed for trial, given the opportunity to provide an account for herself and upon the return of a jury with its verdict, I hope a judge not appointed by her sentences her to punishment.

I'll have more to say about the AFR shortly.

Yesterday, Craig Thomson and Michael Williamson were expelled from the Labor Party.  Yesterday.

Just so you know, the date yesterday was 4 April, 2014.   Thomson was reported to the Industrial Registrar in 2009 for the credit card frauds that had started in 2002.

Ian Temby handed down his report into the HSU and Williamson in July 2012.   Fair Work Australia's report into Thomson was handed down in April 2012.

In July last year the Prime Minister of Australia used his office to intervene in the affairs of the NSW branch of the Labor Party.

So the obvious person Labor might select to fix things up, sort out disputes and stuff would have to be the same guy who was representing Craig Thomson in court, trying to get him off those charges arising from stealing money from low paid workers.    

Former judge Greg James to clean up NSW Labor

NSW Labor will nominate retired Supreme Court judge Greg James, QC, to become chairman of a new internal dispute resolution regime designed to help clean up the troubled branch.

But the appointment will not be without some controversy because Mr James is also representing disgraced former Labor MP Craig Thomson.

He is married to Barbara Ramjan, who controversially accused Prime Minister Tony Abbott of punching the wall next to her head when they were students.

The NSW branch is expected to nominate Mr James as chairman of its revamped review panel at a meeting of the Labor national executive on Friday.

The move to an independent chairman was part of former prime minister Kevin Rudd's dramatic "intervention" in the NSW branch in response to corruption revelations. about former Labor minister's Eddie Obeid and Ian Macdonald.

In another twist, Mr James represented Mr Macdonald's close friend Greg Jones when he appeared as a witness at the Independent Commission Against Corruption inquiries into the granting of a mining licence at Mt Penny in the Bylong Valley.

Mr Obeid and Mr Macdonald were found to have acted corruptly in rigging a tender for the licence and face possible criminal charges.

You couldn't write this stuff.

Who could disagree with a guy on 73%?   Maybe someone with a scintilla of morality and some principals.

Here's how the SMH saw it.

Kevin Rudd too popular to go against: home insulation inquiry

Former prime minister Kevin Rudd's record-high popularity stopped bureaucrats from opposing the home insulation scheme before its much-criticised rollout, an inquiry has heard.

Insulation consultant Kevin Herbert claims Mr Rudd's popularity rating of 73 per cent was used to discourage bureaucrats who raised potential safety issues with the program during a meeting in February, 2009.

Mr Herbert's statement to a royal commission says the potential for fatalities, as seen in New Zealand, was raised.

Prime minister's department staffer Andrew Wilson was also asked if Mr Rudd would consider looking at the issues before the scheme proceeded.

Mr Herbert said Mr Wilson replied: "You can't disagree with a PM who is rating 73 per cent in the polls."

After the meeting, he said he asked Mr Wilson: "Are we really hearing that you're saying the PM wants this to go ahead no matter what?"

"Mr Wilson replied to me 'Yes that really is it, it's going ahead'."

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/kevin-rudd-too-popular-to-go-against-home-insulation-inquiry-20140404-zqqxs.html#ixzz2xwxEimWY

Paul Howes may leave the AWU but the AWU Scandal won't leave him. 

It beggars belief that a union leader might think it was important to make the (false) assertion that those involved in The AWU Scandal only stole from bosses - but Howes's statement is at odds with the sworn affidavit of his President Bill Ludwig:

While Mr Howes might want to limit the damage and point the finger only at Wilson and Blewitt, Victoria Police are not so blinded.   This extract from the Judgement of His Honour the Chief Magistrate Peter Lauritsen should have Wilson, Blewitt and others concerned (Mitchell is Detective Sergeant Ross Mitchell, the officer in charge of The AWU Scandal investigation).

Here's the original email from one of the AWU's members to Mr Howes.

Hi Paul, 

Given your numerous TV and  radio appearances, I sort of feel that I have got to know you as a good  bloke, doing a good job on behalf of AWU members.   It sort of feels  like I have come to know you, at least a bit, as a guest in our living  room over the past few years.  

My formerly favourable impression is coming into question in  relation to the events relating to Ms Gillard and her role in the  establishment and operation of the AWU Workplace Reform Association.    By now you are no doubt as familiar with the issues as anyone (or at  least anyone following the investigative journalism of Michael Smith and  Hedley Thomas).  I realise that this is a tricky and difficult issue for the AWU and you.  However, it has become very clear that there is a  major issue of concern here.  Over $500,000 of AWU members assets has  "disappeared" through a mechanism that could not have been available to  Bruce Wilson had not Ms Gillard facilitated the establishment of the AWU Workplace Reform Association.   

Ms Gillard claims to have "answered all questions" in relation to  this matter.  It is very evident that she has not.  For example, she has not responded to the list of questions relating to this affair prepared by The Australian.  Nor has she responded to questions from Michael  Smith relating to the witnessing of the Power of Attorney, nor the  representations to the WA Corporate Affairs Commission that led them to  approve the establishment of the AWU Workplace Reform Association. 

As I said at the outset, I think you are a good bloke.  However, the time has come when you must stop defending the indefensible.   There  are issues of integrity and principle here that demand that those  responsible be held to account.   

Signed by the sender

PS.  I am a retired bloke, a swinging voter who has voted more for the ALP than for the Coalition.   I hold  the view that the Hawke/Keating government was the best government this  country has had in my lifetime, and a great credit to the union movement and Labour.  Howard had the sense to support their initiatives from the opposition benches, and to continue their policies in government.   Sadly, the Rudd/Gillard government looks like an amateur shambles by  comparison. 

I have received quite a few copies of this brochure from members of the Health Services Union - it's been mailed apparently to all members of the union.

A letter accompanies the brochure in the same envelope.   It's signed by Chris Hayes's brother Gerard Hayes who is standing for election as the Secretary of the Union in elections in a few weeks.

I spoke yesterday to Katrina Hart, a health-worker who was narrowly defeated in the last HSU election campaign in 2012.   She told me she is running again.   It is noteworthy that no HSU resources have been made available to her to let her mail a letter to every member of the HSU with a brochure that says, "We will change the HSU by......"