In the months leading up to the Kerr Street property purchase, Julia Gillard was present in the WAIRC acting for Ralph Blewitt the acting State Secretary of the WA Branch of the AWU.   She can't have missed this, it being the fundamental element of the Hammersley matter.

Ralph Blewitt and his assets were right in the gun.

It was common knowledge in 1993 that every senior union official involved in the Hammersley Iron case in WA stood to lose all their personal assets (plus some).   For several years the AWU WA branch carried a $50M contingent liability on its balance sheet on account of the Hammersley Proceedings.

What is the point of taking or providing legal advice about acquiring a new asset (like Kerr Street) that was immediately under threat of loss owing to the high probability of a successful law suit against the asset owner.   In the case of Mr and Mrs Ralph Blewitt, the problem would have been easily and sensibly fixed by the simple, uncontroversial, legal, proper and sensible course of simply putting the house in her name.  Harry Nowicki explained it to me last year.

We've always known that Gillard's failure to advise Blewitt about the risk of the Hammersley matter chewing up his new Kerr Street investment amounted to something pretty close to professional misconduct.   But what we didn't know until yesterday was that she flew to Perth to appear in part of the Hammersley proceedings with such perfect timing that she couldn't have failed to put two and two together and advise Ralph  properly about it.

It seems one of her clients had the benefit of legal advice to alienate his personal assets.   It's just that it wasn't the one whose interests she was supposed to be protecting.