Canberra-based Crikey writer Bernard Keane has today published this quote from the late Bob Ellis.

Bob Ellis on Julia Gillard pic.twitter.com/d6esTTlqba

— Bernard Keane (@BernardKeane) April 3, 2016

Ellis was right, but he died without knowing why.

We recently wrote about how much drama Gillard caused in the lead up to the Pacific Islands Forum as a result of her grandstanding and her wish to present the major "women's" announcement at the event.

In the months leading up to the Forum the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and others worked to accommodate Gillard's wishes.   After being quizzed about her own apparently low-key "gender"  role at the event, Clinton wrote to her team on 24 August 2012 to say

I thought the reason we weren't doing a separate women's event at the PIF was because Gillard wanted to make her own big gender announcement.

After 5 days of further negotiations, the US Ambassador at Large for Women wrote to Clinton et al to say late on 29 August 2012 

Sent: Wednesday, August 29, 2012 6:40 PM To: I think we are all set with the women's event at the Cook Islands with brief remarks from PM Gillard, the NZ FM, and a Pacific women leader. You will open the event and they will follow. 

Around 11AM Sydney time 29 August, Clinton's private secretary wrote to Clinton in what appears to be a still redacted email, only the header has been published by the US State Department.

We don't know what private message was passed on - but it appears that by 29 August, mid-morning, Gillard had news for Clinton about her return to Australia.    Keep that date in mind as you read on.

The next day, 30 August 2012, 5 Australian soldiers were killed in Afghanistan - 2 Special Air Service Regiment men in a helicopter crash, and 3 diggers shot and killed by a Muslim working with our troops.

About 3.30PM on 30 August 2012, still at the Cook Islands, Gillard gave a press conference about the deaths in Afghanistan - the video is here

The ABC ran a timeline (Sydney time) of the events of 30 August 2012  here - the relevant bits for Gillard include:

3.28pm: Ms Gillard says 'insider' incidents involving attacks by Afghan forces on international troops are "corrosive of trust" between Australian soldiers and the Afghans that they train.

Seven Australian soldiers have been killed by Afghan soldiers in the past 12 months.

3.27pm: Ms Gillard seeks to remind Australians that "this is a war with a purpose and it is a war with an end", but admits many Australians will be asking why we are still there.

"We went for the right reasons in our national interest to prevent Afghanistan from being a safe haven for terrorists who would come and kill Australians and so many innocent civilians."

3.23pm: Prime Minister Julia Gillard says Australia is confronting awful news from Afghanistan.

"This is a very big toll and this means that in a war of so many losses this is our single worst day in Afghanistan.

"Indeed I believe this is this most losses in combat since the days in the Vietnam war and in the Battle of Long Tan.

"This is news so truly shocking that it will feel for many Australians like a physical blow.

"If we are feeling that then it is hard to imagine what the families of these five men are feeling. Their loss is immense , their grief will be sharp.

"The mates of these men and people in the ADF more broadly will feel this very deeply.

"Our hearts go out to those in the field and to the people who are endeavouring to hunt down the Afghan who has killed our Australians and to those investigating the helicopter crash."

Then at the tail end of that press conference Gillard made this announcement.

3:38pm: Prime Minister Julia Gillard says she will leave the Pacific Islands Forum in the Cook Islands a day early, so she can get a full briefing on the two incidents.

Leaving a day early to get a full briefing on the death of 5 troops?   Like she couldn't do that on the phone or with a video link?   She'd given a press conference and made the formal announcements.

As a result of her leaving early, a bi-lateral meeting between between Australia and the US was cancelled.  A tri-lateral meeting involving the US, Australia and New Zealand was in doubt and as late as 8PM Sydney time on 30 August 2012 the US State Department had no idea about who from Australia would represent us at other events.

After this official advice from the US State Department.

Gillard might be telling the truth when she said she returned to Australia a day early to get a full briefing on the 5 deaths in Afgjhanistan.

Or she might have had this timeline on her mind.

On Saturday 18 August 2012 The Australian published very damaging articles about Gillard, including a redaction copy of her departure interview.  Oo 19 August Peter Van Onselen and Paul Kelly interviewed Gillard on Sky TV.  Later that day someone at Slater and Gordon decided to issue a press release in support of Gillard.  Over the next few days Nick Styant Browne, Slater and Gordon (again), Peter Gordon and others issued a range of statements about Gillard.

23 August 2012 - Gillard held her marathon AWU question and answer session in Canberra with our journalistic elite.

The next day I set up my website.

On Monday 27 August 2012 - I published this, "I will share all the documents I have on The AWU Scandal".

That night the ABC's Media Watch program ran a detailed story about The AWU Scandal 

It's worth revisiting a little of that Media Watch story - to give a bit of context to that week's events

nine days ago, The Weekend Australian published this front-page story ...


Revealed: Gillard lost her job after law firm's secret investigation

Hedley Thomas

— The Weekend Australian, 18th August, 2012

... Julia Gillard deliberately conflated it with the campaign in the blogosphere. On Sky News next morning she refused to answer questions about the Hedley Thomas story:


PM: Well I am not going to get into a circumstance where we’ve got people blogging malicious non-sense and we’re having some of this penetrate into the media...

— Sky News Australia, Agenda, 19th August, 2012

Many mainstream political reporters and commentators sympathised, including one of her interviewers that Sunday morning, Sky’s Peter Van Onselen


Peter Van Onselen: I believe you, that you did nothing wrong. I made a comment on Friday on my show the Contrarians that I thought this is all a beat-up and that we should move onto the major issues.

— Sky News Australia, Agenda, 19th August, 2012

ABC Melbourne Radio’s Jon Faine agreed...


Jon Faine: ... the conspiracy theorists are having a ball, the blogosphere’s running amok, it’s all completely out of control ... 
... why is it on the front page of the paper? Well, I just have to tell you, I don’t understand it either

— ABC 774, Mornings with Jon Faine, 21st August, 2012

Most outspoken of all was Crikey’s Bernard Keane. He dismissed Hedley Thomas’s article as no more than ...


vague claims ... recycled from right-wing hate blogs.

— Crikey, 20th August, 2012

Well, I think that’s nonsense. Hedley Thomas’s first story, nine days ago, reported that a former senior partner of Slater and Gordon claimed that 


Julia Gillard left her job as a partner with law firm Slater & Gordon as a direct result of a secret internal probe in 1995 into controversial work she had done for her then boyfriend, a union boss accused of corruption...

— The Weekend Australian, 18th August, 2012

That was news from a primary source. He disclosed that Julia Gillard had understood the real purpose of the Workplace Reform Association she helped establish was...


...to hold re-election funds for union officials contributed by individual union members and fundraisers. She stated it was referred to as a re-election or slush fund.

— The Weekend Australian, 18th August, 2012

That was news. And it disclosed that


...Ms Gillard had confirmed that "she did not open a file at the firm" to establish the association, and that she could not at the time recall any reason why a file was not opened.

— The Weekend Australian, 18th August, 2012

And so on. You can question the motive of The Australian, as it filled page after page with detail that few will read. But Hedley Thomas’s articles were for the most part sober and meticulous – and for the first time, perhaps, showed how much of the ranting in the blogosphere had substance, and how much did not.

And then a careless mistake was made by a colleague writing an incidental colour piece about Bruce Wilson in Thursday’s paper... 


Seventeen years ago, after Slater & Gordon grilled his lawyer girlfriend Julia Gillard about a trust fund she’d set up for him ... up-and-coming labour leader Bruce Wilson knew one of them had to ride off into the sunset.

— The Australian, 23rd August, 2012

If Ean Higgins had written ‘slush fund’ – and put it in inverted commas – the Prime Minister could not have complained – they were the words she’d used to describe the Workplace Reform Association to her colleagues in 1995.

As it was, she was able to imply that thousands of words of largely accurate reporting were false and defamatory. But it was too late to do what she did last year, and use the mistake to gag The Australian. Instead, she did the opposite...


Julia Gillard: In these circumstances, where I am seeing, recycled again, false and defamatory material attacking my character, I have determined that I will deal with these issues.

— ABC News 24, 23rd August, 2012

It was clear it was going to be a big week on The AWU Scandal.

On 29 August 2012 I published a story with documents shown publicly for the first time detailing the discovery of Wilson's Melbourne frauds.

http://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2012/08/the-awu-scandal-wilson-charged.html

Although I didn't realise it at the time, this story sets out one of the major problems for Gillard and Slater and Gordon - that is the events leading up to the discovery of the AWU Members Welfare Association account and  the $160K it housed courtesy of Thiess, John Holland, Woodside et al.   What I didn't know at the time - but Gilard clearly did - was that the AWU Members Welfare Association account was also the resting place for a $21,000 cheque made out to the AWU  Workplace Reform Association.  Rereading the post now, we were close enough to the frightening truth to put the wind up Gillard, Murphy, Wilson et al.

What was clear on 29 August 2012 was the fact that the 23 August press conference did not "do the trick" for Gillard in putting the story of The AWU Scandal to bed.   Gillard was watching media and other developments i that week like a hawk.   There'd been a pattern of big stories breaking on the scandal on Saturdays in The Australian.  

Like I said, there's a chance Gillard left the Cook Islands on that Thursday to get a briefing on our 5 dead soldiers.   A chance.

But given her line by line media management of The AWU Scandal, I think the odds are much better for the AWU Scandal being the driver for her to get home early.

Only now are we coming to realise how much that "distraction" cost us.   

Cleopatra got the VIP treatment for her arrival at an event that wasn't important enough for her to stay at.