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Does Gillard inspire confidence?

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I would be a bit worried if it was Barrie O'Farrell's police who were investigating her. She would probably come out smelling like roses.
 
Calliope said:
I would be a bit worried if it was Barrie O'Farrell's police who were investigating her. She would probably come out smelling like roses.
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She'll get most if not all of the states on board by June 30.

It's just a case of each state deciding then they feel they've haggled a big enough bag of money.
 
Looks like Melbourne is pushing for a 2nd international airport, and will get it.

Barrie O'Farrell is against a 2nd Sydney airport.

Why?

Politics?

Will his views change after the Sep election?
 

Well, from this comment by Michael Smith, we should expect something tomorrow....

If she's unhappy tonight, she will be unhappier yet tomorrow. Sleep well as the presses roll.

http://www.michaelsmithnews.com
 
drsmith said:
She'll get most if not all of the states on board by June 30.

It's just a case of each state deciding then they feel they've haggled a big enough bag of money.
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Hasn't everyone worked out, there isn't a bag of money. Jeez I want to scream.
 
If this is a correct rendition of what Gillard's spokesman said, then she is just digging a deeper hole.

A spokesman for the Prime Minister said last night there was "no change" in her position. "The Prime Minister has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and there has been no request for an interview with police," he said.

That is not what Fordham alleged today. From the same story....

The request came as the Prime Minister denied allegations made by radio broadcaster 2GB's Ben Fordham that she was under direct investigation.

If you listen to Fordham's broadcast, he is at all times talking about Gillard's claim in her earlier interview with him that she was not under investigation. The issue was never whether she has been interviewed by police or whether such a request has been made. Denying an accusation that has not been made against you is just a diversion from the real accusation.

Gillard denies new AWU request

A FORMER union employee who has told of depositing $5000 into Julia Gillard's bank account at the direction of her allegedly corrupt union boss boyfriend has been asked by Victoria Police to make a formal statement as part of an ongoing fraud investigation.

The request came as the Prime Minister denied allegations made by radio broadcaster 2GB's Ben Fordham that she was under direct investigation.

Ms Gillard has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in relation to the money.

Fordham said Victoria Police had verified to him that she was being investigated and asked him to make a statement about responses Ms Gillard gave in a March 7 radio interview about her conduct in an alleged fraud involving several hundred thousand dollars in the early 1990s.

The Australian is aware that detectives have questioned more than 12 witnesses since late last year who had direct knowledge of the Australian Workers Union slush fund scandal, the role of Ms Gillard at law firm Slater & Gordon and admissions by former AWU official Ralph Blewitt that he helped perpetrate a major fraud at the union.

Ms Gillard says she provided legal advice to help set up the AWU Workplace Reform Association, which her then boyfriend Bruce Wilson later used to carry out the alleged fraud. She later described the association as a "slush fund" for the re-election of union officials, but said she had no knowledge of its operations.

Wayne Hem, a former AWU employee, said yesterday that Fraud Squad detectives wanted him to say as little as possible to the media about his upcoming statement: "I've been asked not to say what my role is going to be."

Victoria Police contacted Mr Hem because he swore a statutory declaration last November and told The Australian that Mr Wilson handed him about $5000 and told him to deposit the money in Ms Gillard's bank account.

Mr Wilson and Ms Gillard, who said she could not recall such a payment, have strenuously denied any wrongdoing.

Fordham alleged yesterday that Ms Gillard had told him during last month's interview something "I now know not to be true".

"We were talking about the police investigation, the ongoing and very real police investigation, into the AWU slush fund scandal. When I mentioned this police investigation, the Prime Minister sought to clarify something."

Ms Gillard had warned Fordham in the interview to "just be careful" and not to cast slurs on her as the police investigation had "nothing to do with me".

He said yesterday: "Julia Gillard wanted to make it clear to (Australians) that she was not being investigated. Well I am correcting that record this afternoon because I know for a fact the Prime Minister is being investigated by police over the slush fund scandal. She was being investigated at the time of the interview.

"The investigation is comprehensive and by no means complete but police are still in the process of taking statements on this issue . . . and I know this because I have actually been asked by police to make a formal statement."

A spokesman for the Prime Minister said last night there was "no change" in her position. "The Prime Minister has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and there has been no request for an interview with police," he said.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/nat...-new-awu-request/story-fn59noo3-1226627403311
 
If Julia Gillard is eventually charged, I suspect it will be a while yet before she is. Bruce Wilson will most likely cop it first as Michael Williamson did before Craig Thomson over HSU matters.

If/When Bruce Wilson is charged, that will most likely trigger a leadership change in Labor in my view.

On the tax front, another fire has ignited under Labor's pants this time in relation to increasing the medicare levy to fund NDIS. Like Super, there's no immediate rush by Labor to put it out.


http://www.theaustralian.com.au/new...-disability-levy/story-fn3dxiwe-1226628391237

Also like with Super, Labor will find it difficult to sit on the fence on this for very long while suffering torture by speculation.
 
DrSmith, you keep harping on about this, when you should know that this is the least of Julia Gillard's problems.

Even if this story was true, Julia Gillard will be long gone as PM.

Ben Fordham is just a grubby little former "Today Tonight" spruiker who is self promoting himself. It took him over six minutes just to say that Julia Gillard is under investigation according to his contacts at Vic Police.
 
Macquack said:
DrSmith, you keep harping on about this, when you should know that this is the least of Julia Gillard's problems.

Even if this story was true, Julia Gillard will be long gone as PM.
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If enough evidence can by collected, Bruce Wilson will be charged. He's as guilty as sin in my view. That (as I have said in a post above) I feel will trigger a leadership change in Labor should it happen before the election.

What you regard as the least of her problems may well become the greatest of her problems after her prime-ministership is over. It all depends on the evidence that's able to be collected.
 
Who knows PM Julia Gillard is under investigation?

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/new...er-investigation/story-e6frg6z6-1226630319702

IN the days after a heated 2GB radio interview in March, during which Julia Gillard was questioned closely about the AWU slush fund scandal, a detective in Victoria's Fraud Squad, Ross Mitchell, made a strategic decision.

One answer the Prime Minister gave during a dogged tussle in her interview with Ben Fordham stood out. Mitchell knew it when he heard it. The other detectives knew it too.

Although seemingly innocuous to those not involved in the probe, Gillard's answer was new and pivotal. It meant police in Melbourne would need a sworn statement from Fordham in Sydney, even though as a journalist he would be expected to subsequently disclose some key facts.

The actions that Mitchell and other police took in seeking further information from Fordham led to him stating in unequivocal terms on his radio show this week something that had been previously cryptically and very carefully inferred - the Prime Minister is under formal Victoria Police investigation as a result of the 18-year-old Australian Workers Union fraud. Fordham has kept a pledge to police to not publicly reveal more than this.

He told his audience: "So, let me make this perfectly clear. The Prime Minister of Australia, Julia Gillard, is under investigation by police. This is fact. I hadn't planned to add to what I said yesterday out of respect for the detectives on the case. But if the Prime Minister's office wants to deny she's being investigated, as has been reported last night and today, then I will once again correct that record. Now it needs to be pointed out that the Prime Minister and her office mightn't know she's being investigated. But I know it. And others do too. The detectives are investigating three individuals and one of them is Julia Gillard. Prime Minister, you may not know this, but you are currently being investigated by the Fraud and Extortion Squad of the Victoria Police Force."

Neither the Police Commissioner of Victoria, Ken Lay, nor the Prime Minister's office has sought to dispute any of Fordham's assertions. Nor is the PM's office now suggesting, as it did in March, that the Victoria Police investigation has nothing to do with Gillard. The reality is that Gillard's office cannot know the details of the probe.

Lay, who has had the opportunity to correct the record if he decided that Fordham had jumped to a wrong conclusion in naming Gillard, let it stand. Lay added: "The AWU matter is under investigation. That's still current."

The Prime Minister has always repeatedly, strenuously and sometimes angrily denied any wrongdoing, accusing The Australian and others of engaging in a smear campaign.

For an alleged fraud being taken seriously since late last year by seasoned detectives, Australians should ask hard questions about why large sections of their media, and particularly the public broadcaster, still baulk at reporting the AWU scandal; downplay the story or, worse, self-censor; ask few or no questions; and even mock journalists who have lost their jobs for pursuing it - Michael Smith and Glenn Milne.

Australia's best-resourced media outlet, the ABC, has scarcely, if at all, reported the ongoing police investigation this year. Only after Media Watch questioned the ABC's obvious reticence to look at the AWU story in any meaningful way last year, the 7.30 program belatedly weighed in. The flagship investigative program, Four Corners, has since abandoned a proposed in-depth story.

Indeed, almost everything that Fordham told his listeners on 2GB this week would surprise Australians who receive their news only from the ABC. Fordham tells Inquirer that nobody from the public broadcaster has contacted him since his revelations.

"I would have thought that the most powerful person in the country being the subject of an ongoing police investigation is a very significant story," Fordham says. "If others choose not to see it that way, I'm more than happy to keep covering it.

"I've had reactions from some people saying: 'How do you know that it's true?' and 'Are you just making it up?' All I can keep saying is that it is 100 per cent fact. I would not say something so serious about the Prime Minister unless I could be 100 per cent sure. If I were wrong on this, there would be a good argument for my dismissal and possibly worse (a defamation action for damages). It would be career suicide and totally unfair to Julia Gillard. But I'm as certain of the facts as I am of my own name.

"I'm not beating my drum and saying 'Look at me'. But if a story about the PM being under investigation is not very interesting and vitally important, I should be in another profession. The listeners are intrigued by it because they are not hearing about it elsewhere. They are not reading about it in every publication and seeing it on the TV news."

With questioning so far of witnesses in Queensland, Victoria, NSW and Western Australia, up to a dozen detectives are particularly interested in the creation and operation of a union election slush fund, misleadingly called the AWU Workplace Reform Association.

The entity was set up and formally registered in Perth with the help of Gillard's legal advice (as a solicitor at Slater & Gordon) to her then boyfriend and client, AWU official Bruce Wilson, and his union sidekick, Ralph Blewitt. The two men allegedly used it as a slush fund to siphon hundreds of thousands of dollars from Thiess during the construction company's development of a major project that required both labour and industrial peace from AWU members.

Some of the money, which was kept secret from everyone else in the union, would go into a $230,000 terrace house at 85 Kerr Street, Fitzroy, bought by Wilson (in Blewitt's name) at an auction he attended with Gillard, whose firm would manage the conveyancing. The terrace house was Wilson's home in Melbourne during his relationship with Gillard and his time as secretary of the Victorian branch of the AWU. The money from the property's sale a few years later went directly to Blewitt and Wilson, not the union, whose national leadership discovered too late that the union had been used in a scam.

In his only recent public statements Wilson has backed Gillard, saying she knew nothing about any wrongdoing. They have each attacked and ridiculed Blewitt, who has said he decided to blow the whistle because two journalists lost their jobs for trying to report the issues.

For Mitchell's taskforce, one of the most interesting features of Blewitt's story is that he has told it in the knowledge that he faces going to prison. Having admitted to police an incriminating role in what he calls a fraud, Blewitt can be prosecuted and convicted. There has been no deal.

One of the planks of Blewitt's story, which 2GB's Fordham latched on to in his interview with the Prime Minister in March, concerns a "power of attorney" document bearing Gillard's signature as the official witness. According to Blewitt, it was a false document.

Blewitt has repeatedly said the "power of attorney" was not worth the paper on which it was written. The document permitted Wilson to buy the Fitzroy terrace house (in Blewitt's name) at auction. Blewitt, who was living in Perth at the time, claims it is bogus - that Gillard could not have "witnessed" it as they were thousands of kilometres apart at the time.

In previous rejections of Blewitt's claims about this document, the Prime Minister insisted she always witnessed such documents properly as a solicitor. But Fordham tells Inquirer that all of Gillard's previous answers seemed to avoid declaring outright that she and Blewitt were in the same room when the power of attorney was witnessed.

"I wanted a straight answer from the PM on that simple question when I interviewed her in March and I wasn't going to let it go," he said.

Gillard finally confirmed to Fordham that she and Blewitt were in the room when the document was signed. It is an assertion that could only be wrong if Victoria Police have evidence placing them on opposite sides of Australia.
 
From the article above,

Gillard finally confirmed to Fordham that she and Blewitt were in the room when the document was signed. It is an assertion that could only be wrong if Victoria Police have evidence placing them on opposite sides of Australia.
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Listening to the interview again, I'm not sure that it was an absolute conformation of that specific document, and judging be the questions and responses that followed, neither was Ben Fordham.

http://www.2gb.com/audioplayer/7690

Listen from 24:45. It depends on the specific context in which she was using the word "absolutely" at 25:16.
 

I think this is where she is in big trouble. Although she didn't say it explicitly as you indicated, she must have been together with Blewitt for her to have properly witnessed his signature, otherwise the POA is a fraudulently made document and she is complicit in its making. But being together with Blewitt for the witnessing, either she must have been in Perth or he in Melbourne. One of them had to fly to the other city, so this is something that police investigators should easily be able to trace, as there must be outstanding records either at S & G (her absence recorded, who booked the tickets, who paid for it etc.) or with one of the airlines.It is a pity that she was never directly asked where the POA was signed.
 
bellenuit said:
I think this is where she is in big trouble.
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One interesting aspect of the article above is that 4-Corners has dropped the story it was going to do.

It would be interesting to know to what extent (if any) that's due to the current police investigation and what that's revealing.
 
The Aus has a piece today on expected 15% swings against Labor in seats in SE Melbourne, but it's behind a paywall.

Up here, Werriwa, in SW Sydney - Gough Whitlam's old seat (and Mark Latham's), looks set to go Liberal for the first time ever.
 
Logique said:
The Aus has a piece today on expected 15% swings against Labor in seats in SE Melbourne, but it's behind a paywall.
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Google news search the article headline and you'll be able to read the article in full. (Note though that you can only do this a limited number of times you are online/during a given day).

According to the article, the 15 per cent swing was in the state by-election for the seat of Lyndhurst where the Libs didn't run a candidate, so that may not be representative.

Also in the article,


This suggests they've given up winning the federal election altogether even if their leader hasn't.
 
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