Thomo1949 said:
The County Court hearing started at 11am & the judge will deliver the sentences after 2:15. She made statements appearing to rule out immediate custodial sentences, however, we'll see. The accused women are here because they lied about their role in providing CBUS client info to the CFMEU but guess what? There are no yellow shirts blockading William St in their support, as happened when Setka & Reardon first appeared at court over their charges. Do these guys hate women or something?

UPDATE after the sentencing 

Over the past few days I've been poring over the emails from Mrs Clinton's private email server.  

Who owns "The Pivot'

Didn't we, not the White House first use the pivot?

Hillary's Forward Deployed Diplomacy

Forward Deployed Diplomacy was the thing.   Even very, very senior people like  Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt M. Campbell, AO, CNZM  (yes the Order of Australia for his work on US/Aus relations) was instructed to report on it.

Who put gender on the map people?   What's the story?

Jan Piercy is a banker friend of Mrs Clinton.  She's writing about the Pacific Islands Forum for 2012.

Remember the Yellow Pages ad with "not happy, Jan".   Hillary was very, very "not happy Jan" after that email. So not happy that she was up and typing at 4.45 in the morning.   And Hillary copied just about everyone after her friend the banker let her know what was really going on in the world.

Melanie Verveer was Obama's first ever Ambassador at Large (for women!) appointed by him but placed in Clinton's team.

This was big!  As Melanne (sic)well knows, we put gender events on the map in the Pacific.......So, what's the story? 

Melanne got the hint.  Anyone who sticks around with Clinton seems to adopt the same strategy in their communications.   Praise her, talk about how busy she must be, how tired she must be, how great she is and how she never screws up.

It goes on and on and on and it gets worse.

The pettiness, the cattiness, the divisive character of this woman who flaps in the breeze on policy is breathtaking.

Gillard comes in for quite a few mentions.

In 2009 Deputy Prime Minister of Australia Julia Gillard flew to the US to meet with key US contacts.  Clinton gave her 10 minutes. 

Check out the "office time", private personal business  and other internal meetings that meant Clinton could only give Gillard 10 minutes.

Clinton was kept informed as Gillard moved to roll Rudd.   She wrote that she felt sorry about what Gillard did to him

Hillary sorry for Rudd

Rudd had his people call Hillary's people about jobs for Kev

This note is from the US Ambassador in Australia up the ladder for Hillary's ultimate attention  (S is code for Secretary of State, i.e. Hillary).

And speaking of Steven Smith.....

Julia Gillard would do anything, absolutely anything to make sure Obama came to Australia

Even buying more from the US if needed?

What's it matter if you spend other people's money on an extra few of these..............

To make sure you get an album full of these?

Quite touching, isn't it?

Sorry Julia, he's just not that into you.

Peter Wicks published this story about Thomson and his reaction to the House of Reps decision to render no real punishment for his Contempt of the Parliament.

Here's what Thomson told Peter Wicks:

"I apologised to Parliament for pointing out that Michael Williamson, Kathy Jackson and her partner Mr Lawler, and Marco Bolano were all likely to be crooks.
 As I have discovered, Parliament doesn't want to hear the truth, instead preferring the lies and deceit of modern party politics. 
Whilst I stand by every word of my speech, I understand that Parliament having issued a formal apology to Kathy Jackson, Michael Lawler, Michael Williamson and Marco Bolano needed to keep true to their discredited version of events."

We have obtained this email sent to the Privileges Committee on behalf of the Bolano family on Wednesday.

Thanks to reader Doubtful John for pointing this policy out.   Here's John Cain, the boss at the public solicitors office in Victoria.   John's one of the people who decide who gets charged and who doesn't.

John Cain Jr is the former Maurice Blackburn lawyer who was present at the Commonwealth Bank to help Bruce Wilson return apparently dodgy money to the companies he'd extracted it from.   This letter is in Cain's handwriting.

So how do John and others at the OPP work out who ends up in the dock and who goes home free?

It boils down to two questions.

Is there a reasonable prospect of conviction?

Is a prosecution "in the public interest"?

That seems like huge latitude to me.   What John Cain thinks is in the public interest may be very different from what you or I think.  

The points he'd consider include (amongst many other things) the "staleness" of the offence.

You reckon a judge and jury hold the power to decide guilt or innocence in our criminal justice system?   That's only for matters that reach the courts.   Imagine holding the power to say its "not in the public interest' that someone is charged in the first place. 

So is it in the public interest that offenders in The AWU Scandal are charged and brought to justice?

You're the public!   Let us know what you think and we'll work out how to communicate the pubic's message to the DPP.

The alternative assessment of 'the public interest'  doesn't bear thinking about.

Children, it is wrong to tell lies (and get caught).   How wrong?   Depends really on whether you have an important job or not, how big the lie is, whether another liar like Julia Gillard is your friend.

Today the Australian Parliament decided that Craig Thomson's lies were about as big as they come.  

After several years of investigations and reams of evidence, today the Parliament came back with its verdict.  Craig Thomson is guilty of lies so big, he is therefore also guilty of Contempt, the biggest crime you can commit in the Parliament.

And the punishment?   You won't want to tell lies after this children, because this is what happens to liars.   

Craig has been reprimanded and the reason for that punishment is that he told the biggest lies at the most important place in the country.

For the past 30 years since I joined the Victoria Police urgent is not a word I use lightly.

We urgently need financial support to keep this site and its ongoing enquiries a going concern.   Going and Concern are two useful words in describing our position without your help!

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Congratulations to the Chair,  Committee members and staff of the Standing Committee of Privileges and Members' Interests for this comprehensive and compelling study of Parliamentary Privilege, the offence of Contempt of Parliament, the elements of the offence of Misleading the Parliament and a detailed narrative concerning the conduct of Craig Thomson.

We should also note that Committee member Joel Fitzgibbon advised the Committee that he had counselled Thomson for his behaviour while Thomson was a Member of the Parliament - Fitzgibbon privately declared the potential conflict of interest two years ago and asked to be excused from the Committee's proceedings on this matter.  Joel's behaviour has been impeccable.

I've one exception to the otherwise exceptionally high quality of this report and that is the recommendation in relation to punishing Thomson.   Thomson's offending is at the highest end of the scale.   The House could put him in gaol for 6 months.  Instead, the Committee recommends the House reprimand him.   Given the comprehensive assessment of the reptilian character of the former member for Dobell this is no punishment at all. 

This report in all but its penalty will be an important case study for Westminster Parliaments around the world.

Thomson is a pariah.   He should be an outcast from decent civil society.  His offending against us all through his contempt of the Parliament is of the highest order.   Like his theft from the members of the HSU he knew his responsibility, he knew the nature of the offence, he knew the penalties; but he consciously decided to go ahead and do it anyway. 

Now we all know the true nature of this man and the truth about what he did.   It is deeply troubling that so many of parliamentary colleagues knew it at the time and yet even the Prime Minister Julia Gillard continued to provide this convict with unqualified support and glowing character assessments.

This report should gives us cause for a long, hard look at not just Thomson, but ourselves. 

The report is 63 pages long and it's published here.

Here are some extracts:

Every day the lost opportunities and damage done because Malcolm Turnbull wanted to be Prime Minister becomes clearer.

Dennis Shanahan in The Australian today on Turnbull's latter-day conversion into someone who's passionate about union corruption.

Turnbull seizes chance to put Shorten in the crosshairs

• THE AUSTRALIAN
• MARCH 17, 2016 12:00AM

When Malcolm Turnbull was asked yesterday about the ACT Labor government’s extraordinary and previously secret agreement giving unions virtual veto on tenders for government work he went into a high-powered stream of pre-election consciousness.

The Prime Minister barely expressed his concern about the specific revelations in The Australian before launching into a considered and strategic attack on the CFMEU, Bill Shorten and an argument for the reintroduction of the Australian Building and Construction Commission.

Turnbull didn’t seem to draw breath for what seemed like five or six minutes as he pivoted away from the ACT, which is a hotbed of union coercion and standover tactics, to target Labor’s iron links with the discredited but financially rich construction unions.

As he tried to fill a policy void with changes to competition law to help small business and fend off the appearance of chaos in the Senate over his voting reforms, Turnbull didn’t miss an opportunity to promote what is going to be his negative — carbon-tax style — theme in the election.

The disclosures of malpractice of union officials before the Heydon royal commission into trade union corruption has hurt the standing of unions generally and Shorten specifically.

We could now be enjoying the political benefits of a sustained, relentless and consistent attack on corrupt unions, something we could believe in, something we knew would result in real action.

Instead of that, we get a clearly short-term political attack aimed at Bill Shorten - without the depth or conviction we deserve from a PM who is really driven to root out crime and corruption in the union movement.  It sounds like typical politician-speak because it is.

Remember Turnbull's first night in the job as PM?  He chose the ABC's 730 program to make it clear that he wasn't Tony Abbott.

On 22 September 2015 I wrote this about Turnbull's nice guy approach to the CFMEU.

Malcolm Turnbull on ABC 730 last night - "we won't be waging war with the unions"

Here's Mr Turnbull's comment in context  - taken from this affable, even flirtatious chat with Leigh Sales on the ABC's 730 program last night.

MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, the industrial relations reform, which is - labour market reform, is a - has been a very vexed one. It's been a - it's obviously been a pitched battle in some respects between the Government and the unions and business and the unions. I think the important thing is to seek to explore ways in which we can achieve more flexibility, higher levels of employment, higher levels of business activity and do so in a way that reassures Australians, Australian workers in particular, that this is not threatening their conditions. In other words - in other words, a - the challenge for us is not to wage war with unions or the workers that they - that they seek to represent, but really to explain what the challenges are and then lay out some reform options. Now, you know, as to specifics, well, we're a cabinet government, so specific policies will be resolved by the cabinet, and in any event, we're only - we're barely a week old.

Mr Turnbull's language signals a de-escalation of hostilities with the unions, he says it's been a "pitched battle" between unions and the government - from now on his government is "not going to wage war" with the unions.

It's very disappointing he didn't take the opportunity to talk about the CFMEU in particular and to support the TURC in general.   I hope Mr Turnbull has not been influenced by the commentariat's "Abbott's Witch Hunt" and the bias allegations against Commissioner Heydon.

If ever there was a time to wage war with the CFMEU it's now.   It's certainly not the time for the government to signal a de-escalation in its pursuit of corruption and blatant crime involving unions.   That would be like police in the midst of a spate of deadly armed robberies deciding that "we don't want to wage war on the crooks - we need to de-escalate our responses".

Mr Turnbull needs to differentiate the interests of workers from the self-interest of corrupt union leaders.   His language should routinely make that clear and he should take every opportunity to endorse the work of the Heydon Royal Commission.   The other side of politics will continue its strategy of trying to discredit the Commission's work  - to counter that campaign the good guys should give unequivocal and informed support to Commissioner Heydon and his Commission.

I hope Mr Turnbull will be one of the good guys.

ENDS

A few days later I wrote this

First dividend for ACTU after Turnbull/Union unity ticket on Abbott

Tonight may be Maria Butera and Lisa Zanatta's last night at home for a while.

Tomorrow morning at 10.30AM the women will face a Judge in Melbourne's County Court for sentencing after lying to the Trade Union Royal Commission.

There's no excuse for what they did.   They knew it was wrong to follow CEO David Atkin's instructions to leak confidential member information to Brian Parker.   They knew it was wrong to lie to the Royal Commission to cover up for Atkin and Parker.

Tomorrow Lisa and Maria will learn the price they'll pay for doing the bidding of a corrupt "gutless prick" in a suit, a bent professional prepared to enable the CFMEU's organised crime.

I wish Ms Butera and Ms Zanatta well for their futures.  They've wholly admitted what they did.  They've assisted authorities.  They weren't motivated by the prospect of personal gain, they didn't steal corporate information for profit, they did what they did at Parker and Atkin's behest and they told lies to cover it to protect Parker and Atkin. 

If they're half the women I think they are they'll be free of the stench of their involvement in the CFMEU's corruption tomorrow.   And I would expect the more senior of the two who reported directly to Atkin will cooperate with ASIC in the same way she cooperated with the TURC as ASIC investigates Atkin over this and other scandals at CBUS.

Ms Butera and Ms Zanatta get the chance to have that bit of their souls which were sold to the CFMEU handed back to them.   Meanwhile for Parker, Atkin and their mates in the movement, the grubby, sleazy world of sordid deals and twisted priorities rolls on.

ASIC is knocking on Atkin's door now, not that an investigation by the regulator means anything to Atkin's chair and Labor fellow-traveller Steve Bracks - here he's talking to the Financial Review:

Read more: http://www.afr.com/news/cbus-board-back-ceo-david-aitkin-despite-royal-commission-allegations-20151231-glxfdc#ixzz435ycjjZz 

I'd imagine Ms Butera and Ms Zanatta feel "very frustrated and disappointed" that they too were "lumped in with people facing more serious matters" by working for ATKIN.  The fact that BRACKS is prepared to back a man like David Atkin tells us a lot about the scale of the corruption problem Australia faces.

I hope Lisa and Maria grab this chance to make a clean break.   Pay the price and close the door on that episode.  You're already much better people than your unspeakable former boss Atkin will ever be.   Welcome back to society.