No kids, property, marriage or shared accounts. So when you discover your boyfriend's a crook, what "steps" do you need to take to end relationship?
Wednesday, 11 November 2015
Gillard was a partner in a major big city law firm. She had her own income, her own newly renovated house. She wasn't formally married to Wilson, they had no children, officially they had no joint property, no joint bank accounts. At least that's what Ms Gillard says, although the Royal Commission found that Wilson was paying for her renovations.
In this recording of her performance at the Royal Commission, she talks about her sudden "discovery" that Wilson was a fraudster. That's when she referred him to Bernard Murphy, after he was sprung fiddling the AWU Members Welfare Association account.
But Gillard doesn't say they split when she found out he was a crook.
She says "subsequent to these events" she had a "discussion with Mr Wilson" where he was evasive and she then"formed the view" that she had not been "fully in the picture about the nature of his conduct".
Then she "took steps to end theiur relationship".
No kids, property, bank accounts, officially separate houses. Wouldn't you just break it off? What "steps" do you need to take - unless there was joint property to be dealt with? Unless there was some expectation that they were building up assets together. Or maybe you knew you had to deal with things like this, as you told your partners in the exit interview on 11 September 1995.
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I will meet with Bob [Smith] as soon as possible for the purpose of clarifying that matter. Now I believe that that must be the source of the rumour about, that must be the factual construct behind what has become the rumour about, about the association or Bruce or the union or whoever paying for work on my house and I don’t obviously given I’ve been fairly surprised by events to date in relation to this matter, I can’t categorically rule out that something at my house didn’t get paid for by the association or something at my house didn’t get paid for by the union or whatever, I just, I don’t feel confident saying I can categorically rule it out...
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Maybe one of the "steps' she needed to take was getting David Feeney and Bob Smith on side about the outstanding renovation bills for her home. Maybe she needed to "take steps' to make sure that Power of Attorney wasn't being misused in disposing of the Kerr Street property.
Another of the steps was probably the legal advice she needed to protect herself. Apparently very expensive legal advice that she couldn't pay for herself - its recorded in the 18 September 1995 Slater and Gordon partners meeting minutes below.
If all her dealings with Wilson were above board and she'd been deceived, why did she need legal advice? Was she going to sue him? What for? Breach of promise?