The slush fund is a matter for a jury
Wednesday, 13 April 2016
A jury will work out whether Gillard was in cahoots with Wilson in The AWU Scandal.
She was either a conspirator or she was deceived by her man Bruce.
There's no 3rd way.
Her fingerprints are all over the AWU WRA job. We know what she did. The question for the jury is what did she think she was doing at the time.
Thankfully for prosecutors, we know that too. Gillard said it in 1995.
Her words have lost a bit of potency because the spin doctors have gone to work. And we get used to things when we hear them a lot. But you'll remember how you felt when you first heard Gillard describe what she did. So will a jury.
When Gillard's partners found out about what she had done in secret for Wilson in The AWU Workplace Reform Association matter they called her in for an interview.
It was formal, she was a lawyer, she didn't need to be cautioned about her admissions. She voluntarily admitted what she understood about what she did - in words a jury will understand.
Gillard said she set up a slush fund.
Bruce asked her to set up a slush fund. She told her partners she set up a slush fund for him.
I was asked by Bruce to, I was asked by Bruce to form, I was asked by Bruce about the holding of election fund monies. It’s, it’s common practice, indeed every union has what it refers to as a re- election fund, slush fund, whatever which is the funds that the leadership team, into which the leadership team puts money so that they can finance their next election campaign.
We have at Slater & Gordon, we have incorporated associations for the purposes of holding, if you like, being the legal entity that holds such an account.
She told them she advised Bruce to use a separate legal entity, an incorporated association to house the slush fund. And she chose the name for the slush fund.
A jury will get that.
First step is her admission that she was asked to set up a slush fund. She volunteered the phrase, it wasn't put to her by Peter Gordon or Geoff Shaw.
She tells us she advised the use of an incorporated entity, a separate legal entity. That was her decision.
Third thing is her decision to call that separate legal entity the Australian Workers' Union - Workplace Reform Association Inc. That was her decision too. She even wrote it out in her own handwriting.
A slush fund, in a separate legal entity, controlled by her boyfriend but legally registered in the name of her boyfriend's employer.
She knows how damaging her admission that she was setting up a slush fund is to ordinary people. So now she's backing away from it.
Slush fund. Think back to when you heard the phrase for the first time in this matter.
Wives know that when husbands maintain slush funds there is generally cause for suspicion.
There was regulatory suspicion about this one too. Gillard didn't respond to the authorities objections with "good point, thank you, I'll change the name".
Ms Gillard "argued the case for its incorporation".
So now, Ms Gillard says her choice of the phrase "slush fund" was a poor selection of words. Why would she later deny what she said? What does that say about a guilty mind?
In March 2013 there was no royal commission on the horizon. Gillard said at the tine that Victoria Police were not investigating her. The parliamentary questions of her appeared to have been exhausted. She spoke freely and was given too much latitude by a largely incurious media.
Maybe she was getting soft as a result. Slips were inevitable.
On 7 March 2013 Gillard spoke in a public interview with Ben Fordham of 2GB. I think it's an important conversation. So do Victoria Police who contacted Fordham the next day to take a witness statement from him.
A jury should hear her denials to Fordham about setting up a slush fund. They should hear her words in her own voice. As you will now.
Fordham pressed the point. How could she use the AWU's name if she knew the purpose was for a slush fund?
"I knew what purpose it was being.......you know.....obviously I have said publicly what purpose....."
I think a jury should hear that little slip too. The facts and Gillard's actions are consistent with achieving the purpose Wilson wanted to achieve. It's logical that Gillard knew, as she said then, what purpose it was being set up........................
Those grabs are extracted from the whole of the interview which is here - in a broader context the two grabs are part of this 40 second exchange.
This the end of Part One of the Slush Fund and the Jury. Part Two shortly.