- Joined
- 28 October 2008
- Posts
- 8,609
- Reactions
- 39
He was having issues with that over the weekend.Google Chrome has blocked access to this link as it is a "known malware distributor". Smith's enemies, and there are many, have probably infected the site.
On his site was an extract from the following article in The Australian.
VICTORIAN police have seized hundreds of union documents locked in a Perth storage unit that could provide important evidence for their investigation into the involvement of Julia Gillard’s former boyfriend in an alleged fraud.
The Australian Workers Union confirmed yesterday that Victorian police had executed search warrants for archives kept in the storage unit, and removed 12 boxes that could assist an investigation into former union official Bruce Wilson and the AWU Workplace Reform Association “slush fund”.
The revelation that potentially key evidence is in police hands comes in the same week that Tony Abbott announced the terms of reference for a wide-ranging royal commission into union corruption, including financial deals and bribes going back decades. It confirms how seriously Victorian police — who also travelled to Perth to interview former union boss Tim Daly about the contents of the boxes — are treating the Wilson case. The Wilson investigation is likely to continue as a parallel police operation separate from the royal commission.
Ms Gillard was a partner with Melbourne-based law firm Slater & Gordon in the early 1990s when she provided legal advice to hep set up the association for Mr Wilson, then her boyfriend. The former Labor prime minister later described the association as a “slush fund” for the re-election of union officials.
She has repeatedly denied wrongdoing, and said she knew nothing about the workings of the fund until serious allegations were raised in 1995 that Mr Wilson and a union sidekick, Ralph Blewitt, had siphoned off money that had been paid to the fund by construction company Theiss into secret West Australian bank accounts.
While insisting she had no involvement in the fund’s workings, Ms Gillard did not disclose her legal work on the fund to other partners of her firm. Nor did she inform her client, the AWU, that she was doing the work for Mr Wilson and Mr Blewitt.
Her relationship with fellow partners “fractured” and she left Slater & Gordon after her role in setting up the fund came to their attention.
Ms Gillard was involved in conveyancing work related to the purchase of a house in the Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy, bought at auction by Mr Wilson in 1993 — in part with money from the slush fund — in Mr Blewitt’s name. Ms Gillard attended the 1993 auction with Mr Wilson, who subsequently lived in the house.
A spokesman for the AWU confirmed to The Australian yesterday that the union’s national secretary, Paul Howes, had instructed officials to co-operate with Victorian police last year when warrants were served to search the archives.
Mr Daly, the AWU’s West Australian branch secretary for almost a decade until 2007, told The Australian he had placed boxes of archives related to the slush fund involving Mr Wilson and Mr Blewitt in a storage unit in the Perth suburb of Maylands in the hope that they would be fully investigated by police one day.
He said he had last seen the contents in 2002, recalling that two boxes in particular contained photocopies of cheques made out to cash and copies of documents related to the purchase of the Fitzroy property. “There were photocopies of cash cheques -- $50,000, $25,000 and $15,000 — a lot in cash cheques,” Mr Daly said. “Also receipts for the house in Fitzroy — lots of documents.”
AWU minutes are among other papers believed to have been seized by Victorian police.
Mr Daly, who runs a cafe in Perth’s Swan Valley, said he left the documents in the storage unit rented by the AWU when he departed the union in 2008. He has repeatedly called for an inquiry into the slush fund since then.
A spokesman for the AWU said the documents had remained untouched since Mr Daly had left, and the union was not sure what Victorian police had seized. A separate batch of 363 documents relating to the Wilson case have been the subject of legal action and remained sealed since they were seized by Victorian police under warrant from Slater & Gordon in June.
In December, Victoria’s most senior magistrate negated Mr Wilson’s right to claim privilege over the documents previously held by Slater & Gordon, after finding reasonable grounds to conclude the documents had been prepared “in furtherance of the commission of a fraud or an offence”.
Mr Wilson is fighting in the courts to keep the documents sealed.
Chief Magistrate Peter Lauritsen found that evidence provided by Mr Blewitt, formerly Mr Wilson’s union mate, had established that the construction company Theiss was “deceived” when it believed it was providing funds to the AWU Workplace Reform Association for a particular service.
“Wilson bought a home with some of Theiss’s payments. Only he knows what happened (to) the rest,” Mr Lauritsen said.
Mr Daly told The Australian he did not know what had happened to the documents he stored after he left the union and he had taken nothing with him. After facing a union election in 2007, he failed in a bid to win a state Labor seat.
He briefly worked as an industrial officer before Mr Howes removed him in 2008 following internal complaints the union was losing membership. “I’ve felt the sharp end of the stick ... I wouldn’t expect that Paul Howes would give me the time of day,” Mr Daly said.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/new...-fund-documents/story-fng5kxvh-1226825253411#