Glenn Milne has egg all over his face after the re-hired columnist filed an error-filled op-ed reviving discredited allegations that Prime Minister Julia Gillard had somehow been an accomplice to her one-time partner Bruce Wilson’s alleged fraud.

The piece rehashed 16-year-old claims — vociferously denied by the Prime Minister whenever they are dredged up — suggesting Gillard had lived in a house with Wilson bought using illegal cash.

Milne had previously written about the saga in 2007. But this morning the Walkleys brawler went further, stating that “Gillard shared a home in Fitzroy bought by Wilson using the embezzled funds.”

Crikey understands that this sentence, removed by News Limited lawyers four years ago, is false.

Now, the entire piece has been deleted from The Australian’s website, with the newspaper forced to issue a grovelling apology acknowledging that the “assertions are untrue”. Damningly, Milne had failed to ring the PM’s office for comment.

http://www.crikey.com.au/2011/08/29/milne/

 

It is interesting but annoyingly so to see how the media reacts differently to various news ...

For example the case of Lindy Chamberlain and the dingo used a lot of bad ink, most nasty and vying for blood... Even stand-up comic Wendy Harmer apologised to Lindy for having made inappropriate comments

Yesterday, a man once convicted of killing his parents got his conviction quashed... But the media is on his heels like mad Rottweiler... Even the ABC reports on his release in a fifty/50 manner... At the herald, the story is a bit better reported... At the daily turd, the story is fully slanted against him...

Why is it so?
Most of such reporting is done by journos who don't have any or hold not much knowledge of the law... 

Despite one disagreement on what to do next, all the three justices agreed strongly that the "evidence" under which the man had been convicted was at best very flimsy and at worse total crap. It had taken about 15 years between the alleged murders and a first court case in which a jury was unable to decide. Another court case followed with more "expert evidence" and affidavits from several people that contradicted their original statements... In that second court case, the jury found the defendant guilty and the judge imposed a sentence "never to be released" or such...

By then it appeared to many friends (some very good sane clever smart people) of the accused that much of the evidence under which he had been charged was totally wrong. For several years, they searched for clear flaws showing that the original evidence was faulty and they presented these in an appeal case. 

The three judges of the appeal could do nothing more than recognise that the evidence under which the man had been charged previously was faulty and that the fellow should never had been convicted under such circumstances. 

But most of the media concentrates its effort on showing a mad uncle who is determined to place his nephew once again behind bars... with evidence that does not exist. This makes great "controversy"!

The media vampires feed on blood... The actual controversy is how on earth the court case that convicted the man got away with such shoddy evidence?

After 19 years now, no new evidence can be brought forward by the prosecution. One has to remember too that soon after the murders were committed, the DPP though there was no evidence to bring a case against the man killing his parents after he had admitted to the killing of his brother whom he's always maintained had killed his parents first.... One must say here that the police investigation was lacking and very "fumbly"... Evidence disappeared, lost or misinterpreted...

The man is entitled to be a free man under the law — our acceptance of reasonable doubt...

--------------------------

It is the same — or slightly different — with Assange, the media is pussy-footing around the case and not really lifting the carpet in one big tug from under its US and Australian masters... Where are the "J'ACCUSE" of our time?... In Pommyland, the UK appeal judges played for their masters, not for justice...
Any law student and my dog (which I don't have) could see that their judgement was flawed. Not because of my conviction, but should it had been someone else but Assange, the result would have been different I believe... Extradition is a serious business, especially when real death-threats have been made against a person...

There should be an investigation of questions and answers on UK soil before any extradition of Assange, in order to make sure there is no hankypanky in the Swedish demands... The refusal of the court to demand this shows a total bias against Assange. And our masters (Julia, Carr, Roxon) wash their bloody hands of the consequences, to appease their own master of empire...

No, our front pages are more interested in Lady Gaga's butt or the state of origin football and the controversy of a mad uncle rather than a proper analysis of the law and the reality of its perversion to suit an outcome...

In that fellows' case, he was convicted using erroneous evidence. Yesterday, the shackles were released because the guardians of the law saw an injustice in convicting a man under false pretences, especially when the man has always claimed his innocence ...

Nothing more, nothing less...

 

The mother of Julian Assange has accused the British, Swedish and Australian governments of being "sycophants" of the United States over the long-running extradition saga involving her son.

On the day that a group of prominent Assange supporters delivered a letter to the Ecuadorean embassy urging the country's President to offer the WikiLeaks founder political asylum, Christine Assange said her son was "buoyed" by the backing he has received.

The film-makers Michael Moore and Oliver Stone, and the philosopher Noam Chomsky, were among the signatories of the letter, which said: "We believe Mr Assange has good reason to fear extradition to Sweden, as there is a strong likelihood that once in Sweden, he would be imprisoned, and then likely extradited to the United States."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/assanges-mother-lashes-out-at-us-7881213.html

The Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, may have breached West Australian corporations law by her involvement in setting up an association for an ex-boyfriend which he then used under the false pretence of improving workplace safety.

Ms Gillard told her former employer, the law firm Slater & Gordon, that she knew the association was really set up as an election slush fund.

''It is common practice, indeed every union has what it refers to as a re-election fund, slush fund, whatever,'' Ms Gillard said in 1995 in a recorded interview about the establishment of the association.

But the application documents for the association and an advertisement placed in The West Australian by the now self-confessed union bagman Ralph Blewitt stated the association's purpose was the ''development of changes to work to achieve safe workplaces''.

The penalty for making false and misleading statements under the relevant state-based Associations Incorporation Act 1987 is a maximum $500.

But a spokeswoman for the WA Department of Commerce said the offence had to be detected and acted on within a year.

A spokesman for Ms Gillard said yesterday she had repeatedly made clear she was not involved in any wrongdoing.

''Any questions about this document should be addressed to the person who lodged and signed it, namely Ralph Blewitt,'' the spokesman said.

There have been continuing calls for Ms Gillard to explain how she may have participated in the deception of the WA Corporate Affairs Commissioner, including from the former Fairfax radio presenter Michael Smith, one of two journalists who lost their jobs for pursuing the affair last year.

Ms Gillard has been caught up in a widening scandal about the slush fund known as the Australian Workers Union Workplace Reform Association Inc, allegedly used by an ex-boyfriend and union organiser, Bruce Morton Wilson, to scam hundreds of thousands of dollars from construction companies. Ms Gillard has denied any knowledge that the fund was used to scam the construction companies.

The story came back to haunt Ms Gillard yet again after a retired Melbourne lawyer, Harry Nowicki, started researching a book on the Australian Workers Union.

Mr Nowicki received a copy of the handwritten application to incorporate the Workplace Reform Association when he applied under freedom of information laws for access to WA police files on the case.

Mr Wilson, a former AWU state secretary in Perth and later Melbourne, had met Ms Gillard in 1991 when she was a senior industrial lawyer with Slater & Gordon in Melbourne.

Ms Gillard said in an interview in 2007, when the issue was raised again just before the election after which she became deputy prime minister, that she was ''young and naive'' when she fell for Mr Wilson, who has since been accused of siphoning off $500,000 in union funds.

AWU officials blew the whistle on the alleged fraud in 1995 after discovering numerous unauthorised bank accounts in the name of the union allegedly set up by Mr Wilson.

It has been alleged that some of that money was used by Mr Wilson to buy a Melbourne house in the name of Mr Blewitt, who is now offering to tell all if he is guaranteed immunity from prosecution.

Peter Gordon, the lawyer who investigated Ms Gillard's conduct and held the interview with her about the scandal, said he had ''no explicit or indirect evidence that she was involved in any wrongdoing''.

Another former Slater & Gordon equity partner, Nick Styant-Browne, has publicly contradicted statements from the law firm made this week about Ms Gillard's sudden departure after the probe.

Mr Styant-Browne said the statement that Ms Gillard coincidentally took a leave of absence in September 1995 and that her resignation from the firm became effective on May 3, 1996, was stunningly incomplete.

He said yesterday he spoke out ''to ensure the public has access to a truthful account of Ms Gillard's departure … I have not the slightest interest in whatever may be the political outcome of the issues that have been raised''.

'Slush Fund' May Come Back To Haunt Gillard

It started as a dark suggestion of involvement in a scheme for union officials to corruptly receive hundreds of thousands of dollars from large companies. It has now morphed into questions about why Julia Gillard left the prominent law firm where she worked until 1995 and about her paperwork management.

But whichever allegations have swirled around the Prime Minister about her involvement with now disgraced union official Bruce Wilson long before she entered Parliament, they ultimately involve her judgment: judgment then and judgment now.

Based on the transcript of an interview between the senior partner of Melbourne law firm Slater & Gordon, Peter Gordon, and Gillard in September 1995, published in yesterday’s The Australian, the bigger problem for the Prime Minister is her judgment now in not dealing with this matter properly earlier.

Her problem with voters is that they think she is a liar. By appearing to obfuscate on these events, she may have only reinforced that view and found the “clear air” the government was hoping for after the carbon tax took effect chewed up on this issue.

She has repeatedly said she has answered questions about this matter. But she hasn’t.

It was really only when the transcript of her interview with Gordon was published yesterday that we got a detailed account of her position.

Her explanation in the transcript deals thoroughly and believably with most of the allegations that have been made about her over the years.

That is, she deals at (sometimes hilarious) length with the history of her house renovations, complete with details of Taugney the Swedish builder, Bill the Greek and the wonderfully named Con who “wogged up” Gillard’s house.

In doing so, she puts to rest the long-standing allegation that, Norm Gallagher-like, she had received free and corrupt renovation work from union mates.

She is persuasive in saying she did not know that money from the fund which, as a lawyer, she had set up for Wilson was subsequently used to buy a house in which the former Australian Workers Union official would live.

Equally, she talks of why she didn’t set up a file in Slater & Gordon’s system to cover the work she did in establishing the fund for Wilson.

“I didn’t have an intention to charge on it, and from time to time I’ve done bits of work on files that I haven’t opened up where I’ve just done relatively small jobs for unions that I wasn’t intending to charge for,” she says.

“We have a file for each union where we put little bits of free work or telephone attendances or advice we give, or they’re kept on my personal file, ‘JEG general’. This was a more substantial job than that and really ought to have been opened on system, but I don’t have a specific recollection of thinking to myself, should I open it on system or shouldn’t I open it on system, but apparently I didn’t.

The one thing that she doesn’t explain – or which is not explained in the heavily redacted transcript that has been published – is an apparent contradiction between the reasons she gave for establishing the fund and her explanation to Gordon about the fund. The stated objective of the entity was to receive funds from companies for safety and training of members.

Yet Gillard told Gordon that “it’s a 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”.

“It is not proper to use union resources for election campaigns so you need to finance them yourself. Some of them, you know, they can cost $10,000, $20,000 – they’re not cheap.

“So the usual mechanism people use to amass that amount of money is that they require the officials who are on their ticket to enter payroll deduction schemes where money each week or fortnight goes from their pay into a bank account which is used for re-election purposes from time to time.

“They also have different fundraisers, dinners and raffles and so on to amass the necessary amount of money to mount their re-election campaign.”

Gillard’s use of the term “slush fund” is particularly unfortunate.

But amid all the cloak and dagger and online conspiracy theories, there is a back story about Gillard’s relationship with Slater & Gordon which has not really surfaced, even though Gordon referred to it directly in a statement he released through his lawyers on Tuesday.

This is that it was not the events involving Wilson that saw Gillard make an unhappy exit from the firm but another case altogether.

“It is relevant to understand that these events occurred in the immediate aftermath of the Harris/Smith case, which had placed relations between the industrial department and the rest of the partners under great strain and damaged relationships,” Gordon’s statement said.

The Harris/Smith case was a sensational scandal in Victorian politics in August 1995, involving Ian Smith, at the time the finance minister in the Kennett government.

Smith resigned after his chief of staff claimed she was pregnant with his child and that he had tried to transfer her when she refused to have an abortion.

The chief of staff’s statement of claim said that Smith assaulted her in a pattern in which Smith threw her on her back and pinned her to the ground by sitting with his knees on her upper arms.

When she had howled in pain, Smith would allegedly bang her head on the floor, bounce on his knees on her arms and often say words to the effect of “Heel, if you would only just learn to heel”.

What has this got to do with Julia Gillard?

Gillard and her colleague Bernard Murphy had been the Slater & Gordon lawyers acting for the woman. In deeply ironic echoes of the James Ashby/Peter Slipper sexual harassment case, the problem was that the statement of claim was apparently leaked to the Herald Sun newspaper within hours of being lodged in the Melbourne Magistrates Court on Tuesday, May 30, and before a writ had been served on Smith.

The then premier, Jeff Kennett, accused Slater & Gordon of “playing it hard, releasing material as it so suits”. Smith told state Parliament that the firm would be called to account for its “disgraceful and unethical actions”.

The former minister later began joint proceedings in the Victorian Supreme Court against both his former chief of staff and Slater & Gordon, for alleged defamation, abuse of process and malicious prosecution.

He also lodged a formal complaint with the Law Institute of Victoria over Slater & Gordon’s handling of the case.

Roll the tape forward to 2012 and Gillard has a few problems.

One is that there has been an unrelenting campaign about this matter on social media which she is right in saying is unlikely to ever stop.

She is right to think that, whatever she says about this matter, it won’t go away.

As to the question of why she left Slater & Gordon, answering the question might mean having to acknowledge that the real breaking point was the apparently tawdry conduct of the Smith case.

This story is a very Melbourne one, swirling with the complexities of the Labor industrial and political scene and what was at the time a highly factionalised law firm.

But from what is known now, the only real issue Gillard has to answer is the one about the apparent contradiction in the reasons why the fund was set up.

More importantly, she needs to look as if she is open to questions about the whole matter and to look as if she is dealing with it frankly.

It might not make the conspiracy theorists go away, but it might get politics back on to other matters, which the government desperately needs to do.

It’s A Question Of Judgment For Gillard

She was clearly furious, but she was also clearly in her element. That sounds like a strange thing to say about a Prime Minister who is being attacked on fronts ranging from the lunatic fringe on the internet to inside her own party.

But if Gillard was this clear and direct in her communication over policy matters she may well be a lot more popular. It was an extraordinary performance.

The Prime Minister was at times steely and irritated, at others incredibly witty.

Asked how she could claim to be naive over a relationship she had at the time she was a 30-year-old partner in a brand-name law firm, without missing a beat Gillard turned on her questioner:

“How old are you?” (The answer came: 32)

“Let me assure you you’ll know a lot more when you’re 50 than you do now.”

It was probably a turning point in her hour-long battle with the press gallery. It came not a moment too soon.

http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/julia-gillard-does-her-best-talking-under-fire/