6PR, Mornings with Paul Murray
E&OE…
PAUL MURRAY You might remember that earlier in the week I said I was prepared to give the benefit of the doubt to the Prime Minister over media reports of her involvement as a young lawyer in setting up a union association that later became the basis of an alleged rort of union funds.
My comments were on Monday morning after the Sunday appearance of Julia Gillard on the Sky television show Australian Agenda where she was questioned by Paul Kelly over the matter and in fact where she stared down Paul Kelly and demanded he put to her any assertions of wrongdoing. And that led me to say on the Monday morning I really thought those pursuing the story did need to outline clearly what she had done that was wrong, because Julia Gillard has consistently said she’d done nothing wrong.
Over the course of this week more information has come out and it has basically come out because Peter Gordon, a former partner in the company that Julia – sorry it wasn’t Peter Gordon, it was another former partner of the company Slater & Gordon – has made public a transcript of an interview that was done with Julia Gillard, by partners of that company right back at the time that was first discovered by Slater & Gordon, an interview with Julia Gillard. And the details from that interview make fairly alarming reading these days and I will read you a quote from it. This is what she said when she was being questioned by the partners about this association that she set up, she said “it is common practice, indeed every union has what it refers to as a re-election fund, slush fund, whatever, into which the leadership team puts money so that they can finance their next election campaign”.
Now that conflicts greatly with what the public was told in public notices about this association. It was meant to be set up for the purpose of the development of changes of work to achieve safe workplaces. That is what was put in the association’s notice when it was drawn up by Julia Gillard. So the story has become much more murky in terms of the case that the Prime Minister will have to answer.
Julie Bishop, the Deputy Federal Opposition Leader, has been pursing this matter in the Federal Parliament. She brings an interesting perspective to it because of course Julie Bishop herself came through the law and in fact ended up as the Managing Partner of a law firm right here in Perth. She joins me on line. Good morning Julie.
JULIE BISHOP Good morning Paul.
PAUL MURRAY What did you make out of the Prime Minister’s reference in that interview with Slater & Gordon that this association was in fact a slush fund?
JULIE BISHOP Her admission that it is common practice for union’s to have slush funds raises some very serious questions about the administration of unions and the possible misuse and misappropriation of union members funds. I thought it was very telling that today former Labor Senator John Black, in an article in the Fairfax’s Financial Review, has said that this would warrant a royal commission if money has disappeared from these slush funds.
So this issue will not go away and it is not enough for the Prime Minister to say blithely and brazenly “I’ve already answered that”. There are so many allegations now being raised on a daily basis, on the front pages of all of the mainstream broadsheet papers – the Sydney Morning Herald, the Financial Review, The Australian, and other papers have raised a number of very serious allegations. And I believe it is time for the Prime Minister to make a full statement disclosing her involvement and what she has done and how that has been addressed by her government. I asked questions of Bill Shorten yesterday, he is the Minister responsible for registered organisations, that includes unions, about his understanding of what should be done to administer these unions that apparently set up slush funds. It does raise some very, very important questions.
PAUL MURRAY He’s got an interesting perspective on it to because he later came in as the national secretary of the AWU…
JULIE BISHOP Precisely.
PAUL MURRAY …and I am told had to take action to fix up this mess.
JULIE BISHOP It goes even broader than that. You will recall that these are matters being raised by the Prime Minister’s former law firm partners, but also by colleagues such as Rob McClelland who is a former Attorney General. He raised this issue in the Parliament, it wasn’t the Liberal Party, he raised it and his involvement is in fact as a lawyer back in those days who had some deep interest, in a professional sense, in this matter.
And we now find that Nicola Roxon, the current Attorney General, failed to disclose her involvement while lashing out at the media, attacking the media for asking questions of the Prime Minister. We now find that Nicola Roxon was indeed one of the lawyers who received the file from Stater & Gordon. After it lost the work from the Australian Workers’ Union, it went to Nicola Roxon’s law firm and she was involved in advising the Australian Workers’ Union on what had happened to this slush fund and the money from it. So it is very murky.
PAUL MURRAY Julia Gillard’s involvement in this proceeded her time in politics, what effect would it – even if there was wrong doing back then – what effect does it have on her capacity now to do her job?
JULIE BISHOP It goes to her character Paul, her ethics, her judgement, whether people can have trust and confidence in her. I think people are entitled to answers from her so that they can make a judgement about whether she is fit to be Prime Minister of the country. Your character doesn’t commence being judged from the moment you take your position as a Member of Parliament. People deserve to know what sort of person you are, how you conducted yourself in your professional life.
It seems that there was a significant breakdown in her relationship with her partners, they lost trust and confidence in her. The firm lost a significant client as a result so it must have been a very big issue within Slater & Gordon at the time. And if the media are continuing to ask these questions, her colleague Rob McClelland raises it in the Parliament, the law firm is giving various versions of the events, well I think it would be very important for the Prime Minister to clear the air and make a statement. The Coalition has offered to make time available in the Parliament if she would like to make a statement to the Parliament which I think would be appropriate.
PAUL MURRAY A lot of the media were leaving The Australian newspaper to pursue this on their own until yesterday and I think that the minute that that slush fund admission came through there has been a substantial change in the attitude of many of the reporters who are now getting into this story. When this story became known in public and her involvement became known some years back I think there was an understanding there that she had innocently set up this association and later learnt that it had been misused by her former partner who was the head of the AWU and that led to the breakdown of their relationship. We didn’t know anything about her leaving Slater & Gordon as a result of it. But this changes it doesn’t it? Because I think now from her very own admission that she can no longer argue that she innocently set up this association and was duped.
JULIE BISHOP And that is right, and there are representations that would have been made to the authorities in Western Australia who incorporated this association as to its purpose. And this is why the issue of why she didn’t open a file with a corresponding file number has assumed such a significance.
To open a file in a law firm is fundamental management practice, that is how lawyers keep records of their clients, the work they are doing, the time being spent on the file, the time being spent by other lawyers. That is how you charge for the work and even if the work is not being charged for, you keep a record of it. You can’t pay out-of-pocket expenses for example unless you have a file opened. That is how you avoid conflicts of interest to ensure that different lawyers in the same firm aren’t taking instructions from different sides of transactions for example.
But in this instance Julia Gillard didn’t set up a file for this work and it raises very serious questions: Was she trying to hide the work from her partners? And that is why now the admission that it was in fact a slush fund calls into question the representations she made on behalf of the Australian Workers’ Union to various authorities as to the purpose of this association.
PAUL MURRAY Julie look I just had a caller who has called through at the moment, you might be very interested to hear this, her name is Penny and she is a sister of a man called Ralph Blewitt. Ralph Blewitt is very much involved. Ralph Blewitt was the secretary of the Australian Workers’ Union in Western Australia at the time that this association was set up and of course it was set up by Julia Gillard, she was the legal person who set it up at the behest of course then partner Bruce Wilson who was the national secretary of the union. Penny is the sister of Ralph Blewitt and she joins us now, hi Penny.
PENNY BLEWITT Yes, hello.
PAUL MURRAY What can you tell us about this?
PENNY BLEWITT I listened to this and Ralph Blewitt is my brother, he is my older brother. He is a crooked as they come. It wasn’t Julia Gillard that stole the money, she might have set up the fund, and Wilson and Blewitt, Ralph Blewitt, were the crooks not Julia Gillard. Ralph is out to make whatever he can make out of this for himself.
PAUL MURRAY Ralph Blewitt came back to Australia, he has been living up in Asia for a while, he came back to Australia three weeks ago and it sparked this story again when he appeared on the front page of The Australian newspaper saying, “I’ll tell my whole story as long as I don’t get prosecuted”.
PENNY BLEWITT Yeh well he is as crooked as they bloody come. Sorry, but he is my older brother and I am telling you now he is rotten to the core.
PAUL MURRAY Is he still in Australia, Penny?
PENNY BLEWITT I don’t know. I haven’t actually seen or spoken to him since our father died 18 years ago.
PAUL MURRAY 18 years ago. So that pre-dates even this?
PENNY BLEWITT Yeah. But he has always been a crook. You know the Dawesville Cut?
PAUL MURRAY Yep.
PENNY BLEWITT AWU was involved down there when the Dawesville Cut was being done. He owned a block of land at Duncraig and he bribed and cajoled truck drivers to take the limestone from the Dawesville Cut up to Duncraig so he could build his bloody mansion.
PAUL MURRAY How did you know about that?
PENNY BLEWITT Because I am his sister.
PAUL MURRAY Yeah but you were saying that you were estranged from him at that stage, how did you get to know about it?
PENNY BLEWITT Not when the Dawesville Cut was happening and he was having the limestone shipped up there to build his mansion.
PAUL MURRAY No that is right, that was in the 80s. Yeah.
PENNY BLEWITT Correct.
PAUL MURRAY Yep. Okay look…
PENNY BLEWITT Don’t believe anything Ralph Blewitt tells you. He is out for what he can get.
PAUL MURRAY He hasn’t told us anything at this stage but he has certainly told The Australian a bit. Did that take it any further Julie?
JULIE BISHOP Well I think Penny’s revelations just add to the public interest in this matter. If Penny has evidence of wrongdoing, of the misuse of union funds she should provide it to Fair Work Australia, that is the organisation set up by the government to investigate precisely these sorts of matters. So I think these revelations just add to the murkiness that is surrounding this. And if slush funds were being used to assist with Ralph Blewitt’s property purchases well that just even raises more questions about the role Julia Gillard had in setting up an association that clearly didn’t carry out the purposes for which it was intended.
PAUL MURRAY Julie police investigations into this matter at the time came to nothing, there were no prosecutions launched. Are you aware that any of those investigations have been sparked again by recent disclosures?
JULIE BISHOP My understanding is that it is because the victim in this instance, which would be the Australian Workers’ Union, didn’t wish to press a complaint. Now I don’t know whether the more recent revelations have led to the police taking a greater interest in it, obviously they were a long time ago, I don’t know whether there are statutes of limitations – depends if it is a criminal matter or a civil matter – so there are a lot of legal questions here Paul. That is why I think it would be very important for the Prime Minister to clear the air so that we can get a clear understanding of her role, or lack of a role, in so many of these accusations and allegations that are swirling around. But they are being put on the front page of our national newspapers, it just can’t be ignored and the Prime Minister must address them.
PAUL MURRAY What would be the correct way to do that?
JULIE BISHOP We have made an offer for the Prime Minister to make a statement in the Parliament and we would certainly give her that opportunity. We have made that offer for a week now; she hasn’t chosen to take it at this point. But I do point out that these are allegations and accusations that are being raised by people within the unions, former leaders, her own colleague Rob McClelland specifically raised it in a speech in Parliament, I guess it was his way of saying to the media “please focus on this, take this seriously”.
PAUL MURRAY I think it is her own words from that transcribed interview from 1995 which has changed the complexion of this story.
JULIE BISHOP I think that is a fair comment Paul. To say that, to admit that it is common practice for unions to have slush funds, I wonder if that is the understanding of the current Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, after all he is the former head of the Australian Workers’ Union.
PAUL MURRAY Yeah and dealt with this issue, I am told, in great detail.
JULIE BISHOP Indeed, as did the current Attorney General Nicola Roxon.
PAUL MURRAY Yep, thanks Julie.
JULIE BISHOP My pleasure.
PAUL MURRAY Julie Bishop, Deputy Federal Opposition Leader.
6PR, Mornings with Paul Murray
Thursday, 23 August 2012
Subjects: Prime Minister Gillard; Australian Workers’ Union; Ralph BlewittE&OE…
PAUL MURRAY You might remember that earlier in the week I said I was prepared to give the benefit of the doubt to the Prime Minister over media reports of her involvement as a young lawyer in setting up a union association that later became the basis of an alleged rort of union funds.
My comments were on Monday morning after the Sunday appearance of Julia Gillard on the Sky television show Australian Agenda where she was questioned by Paul Kelly over the matter and in fact where she stared down Paul Kelly and demanded he put to her any assertions of wrongdoing. And that led me to say on the Monday morning I really thought those pursuing the story did need to outline clearly what she had done that was wrong, because Julia Gillard has consistently said she’d done nothing wrong.
Over the course of this week more information has come out and it has basically come out because Peter Gordon, a former partner in the company that Julia – sorry it wasn’t Peter Gordon, it was another former partner of the company Slater & Gordon – has made public a transcript of an interview that was done with Julia Gillard, by partners of that company right back at the time that was first discovered by Slater & Gordon, an interview with Julia Gillard. And the details from that interview make fairly alarming reading these days and I will read you a quote from it. This is what she said when she was being questioned by the partners about this association that she set up, she said “it is common practice, indeed every union has what it refers to as a re-election fund, slush fund, whatever, into which the leadership team puts money so that they can finance their next election campaign”.
Now that conflicts greatly with what the public was told in public notices about this association. It was meant to be set up for the purpose of the development of changes of work to achieve safe workplaces. That is what was put in the association’s notice when it was drawn up by Julia Gillard. So the story has become much more murky in terms of the case that the Prime Minister will have to answer.
Julie Bishop, the Deputy Federal Opposition Leader, has been pursing this matter in the Federal Parliament. She brings an interesting perspective to it because of course Julie Bishop herself came through the law and in fact ended up as the Managing Partner of a law firm right here in Perth. She joins me on line. Good morning Julie.
JULIE BISHOP Good morning Paul.
PAUL MURRAY What did you make out of the Prime Minister’s reference in that interview with Slater & Gordon that this association was in fact a slush fund?
JULIE BISHOP Her admission that it is common practice for union’s to have slush funds raises some very serious questions about the administration of unions and the possible misuse and misappropriation of union members funds. I thought it was very telling that today former Labor Senator John Black, in an article in the Fairfax’s Financial Review, has said that this would warrant a royal commission if money has disappeared from these slush funds.
So this issue will not go away and it is not enough for the Prime Minister to say blithely and brazenly “I’ve already answered that”. There are so many allegations now being raised on a daily basis, on the front pages of all of the mainstream broadsheet papers – the Sydney Morning Herald, the Financial Review, The Australian, and other papers have raised a number of very serious allegations. And I believe it is time for the Prime Minister to make a full statement disclosing her involvement and what she has done and how that has been addressed by her government. I asked questions of Bill Shorten yesterday, he is the Minister responsible for registered organisations, that includes unions, about his understanding of what should be done to administer these unions that apparently set up slush funds. It does raise some very, very important questions.
PAUL MURRAY He’s got an interesting perspective on it to because he later came in as the national secretary of the AWU…
JULIE BISHOP Precisely.
PAUL MURRAY …and I am told had to take action to fix up this mess.
JULIE BISHOP It goes even broader than that. You will recall that these are matters being raised by the Prime Minister’s former law firm partners, but also by colleagues such as Rob McClelland who is a former Attorney General. He raised this issue in the Parliament, it wasn’t the Liberal Party, he raised it and his involvement is in fact as a lawyer back in those days who had some deep interest, in a professional sense, in this matter.
And we now find that Nicola Roxon, the current Attorney General, failed to disclose her involvement while lashing out at the media, attacking the media for asking questions of the Prime Minister. We now find that Nicola Roxon was indeed one of the lawyers who received the file from Stater & Gordon. After it lost the work from the Australian Workers’ Union, it went to Nicola Roxon’s law firm and she was involved in advising the Australian Workers’ Union on what had happened to this slush fund and the money from it. So it is very murky.
PAUL MURRAY Julia Gillard’s involvement in this proceeded her time in politics, what effect would it – even if there was wrong doing back then – what effect does it have on her capacity now to do her job?
JULIE BISHOP It goes to her character Paul, her ethics, her judgement, whether people can have trust and confidence in her. I think people are entitled to answers from her so that they can make a judgement about whether she is fit to be Prime Minister of the country. Your character doesn’t commence being judged from the moment you take your position as a Member of Parliament. People deserve to know what sort of person you are, how you conducted yourself in your professional life.
It seems that there was a significant breakdown in her relationship with her partners, they lost trust and confidence in her. The firm lost a significant client as a result so it must have been a very big issue within Slater & Gordon at the time. And if the media are continuing to ask these questions, her colleague Rob McClelland raises it in the Parliament, the law firm is giving various versions of the events, well I think it would be very important for the Prime Minister to clear the air and make a statement. The Coalition has offered to make time available in the Parliament if she would like to make a statement to the Parliament which I think would be appropriate.
PAUL MURRAY A lot of the media were leaving The Australian newspaper to pursue this on their own until yesterday and I think that the minute that that slush fund admission came through there has been a substantial change in the attitude of many of the reporters who are now getting into this story. When this story became known in public and her involvement became known some years back I think there was an understanding there that she had innocently set up this association and later learnt that it had been misused by her former partner who was the head of the AWU and that led to the breakdown of their relationship. We didn’t know anything about her leaving Slater & Gordon as a result of it. But this changes it doesn’t it? Because I think now from her very own admission that she can no longer argue that she innocently set up this association and was duped.
JULIE BISHOP And that is right, and there are representations that would have been made to the authorities in Western Australia who incorporated this association as to its purpose. And this is why the issue of why she didn’t open a file with a corresponding file number has assumed such a significance.
To open a file in a law firm is fundamental management practice, that is how lawyers keep records of their clients, the work they are doing, the time being spent on the file, the time being spent by other lawyers. That is how you charge for the work and even if the work is not being charged for, you keep a record of it. You can’t pay out-of-pocket expenses for example unless you have a file opened. That is how you avoid conflicts of interest to ensure that different lawyers in the same firm aren’t taking instructions from different sides of transactions for example.
But in this instance Julia Gillard didn’t set up a file for this work and it raises very serious questions: Was she trying to hide the work from her partners? And that is why now the admission that it was in fact a slush fund calls into question the representations she made on behalf of the Australian Workers’ Union to various authorities as to the purpose of this association.
PAUL MURRAY Julie look I just had a caller who has called through at the moment, you might be very interested to hear this, her name is Penny and she is a sister of a man called Ralph Blewitt. Ralph Blewitt is very much involved. Ralph Blewitt was the secretary of the Australian Workers’ Union in Western Australia at the time that this association was set up and of course it was set up by Julia Gillard, she was the legal person who set it up at the behest of course then partner Bruce Wilson who was the national secretary of the union. Penny is the sister of Ralph Blewitt and she joins us now, hi Penny.
PENNY BLEWITT Yes, hello.
PAUL MURRAY What can you tell us about this?
PENNY BLEWITT I listened to this and Ralph Blewitt is my brother, he is my older brother. He is a crooked as they come. It wasn’t Julia Gillard that stole the money, she might have set up the fund, and Wilson and Blewitt, Ralph Blewitt, were the crooks not Julia Gillard. Ralph is out to make whatever he can make out of this for himself.
PAUL MURRAY Ralph Blewitt came back to Australia, he has been living up in Asia for a while, he came back to Australia three weeks ago and it sparked this story again when he appeared on the front page of The Australian newspaper saying, “I’ll tell my whole story as long as I don’t get prosecuted”.
PENNY BLEWITT Yeh well he is as crooked as they bloody come. Sorry, but he is my older brother and I am telling you now he is rotten to the core.
PAUL MURRAY Is he still in Australia, Penny?
PENNY BLEWITT I don’t know. I haven’t actually seen or spoken to him since our father died 18 years ago.
PAUL MURRAY 18 years ago. So that pre-dates even this?
PENNY BLEWITT Yeah. But he has always been a crook. You know the Dawesville Cut?
PAUL MURRAY Yep.
PENNY BLEWITT AWU was involved down there when the Dawesville Cut was being done. He owned a block of land at Duncraig and he bribed and cajoled truck drivers to take the limestone from the Dawesville Cut up to Duncraig so he could build his bloody mansion.
PAUL MURRAY How did you know about that?
PENNY BLEWITT Because I am his sister.
PAUL MURRAY Yeah but you were saying that you were estranged from him at that stage, how did you get to know about it?
PENNY BLEWITT Not when the Dawesville Cut was happening and he was having the limestone shipped up there to build his mansion.
PAUL MURRAY No that is right, that was in the 80s. Yeah.
PENNY BLEWITT Correct.
PAUL MURRAY Yep. Okay look…
PENNY BLEWITT Don’t believe anything Ralph Blewitt tells you. He is out for what he can get.
PAUL MURRAY He hasn’t told us anything at this stage but he has certainly told The Australian a bit. Did that take it any further Julie?
JULIE BISHOP Well I think Penny’s revelations just add to the public interest in this matter. If Penny has evidence of wrongdoing, of the misuse of union funds she should provide it to Fair Work Australia, that is the organisation set up by the government to investigate precisely these sorts of matters. So I think these revelations just add to the murkiness that is surrounding this. And if slush funds were being used to assist with Ralph Blewitt’s property purchases well that just even raises more questions about the role Julia Gillard had in setting up an association that clearly didn’t carry out the purposes for which it was intended.
PAUL MURRAY Julie police investigations into this matter at the time came to nothing, there were no prosecutions launched. Are you aware that any of those investigations have been sparked again by recent disclosures?
JULIE BISHOP My understanding is that it is because the victim in this instance, which would be the Australian Workers’ Union, didn’t wish to press a complaint. Now I don’t know whether the more recent revelations have led to the police taking a greater interest in it, obviously they were a long time ago, I don’t know whether there are statutes of limitations – depends if it is a criminal matter or a civil matter – so there are a lot of legal questions here Paul. That is why I think it would be very important for the Prime Minister to clear the air so that we can get a clear understanding of her role, or lack of a role, in so many of these accusations and allegations that are swirling around. But they are being put on the front page of our national newspapers, it just can’t be ignored and the Prime Minister must address them.
PAUL MURRAY What would be the correct way to do that?
JULIE BISHOP We have made an offer for the Prime Minister to make a statement in the Parliament and we would certainly give her that opportunity. We have made that offer for a week now; she hasn’t chosen to take it at this point. But I do point out that these are allegations and accusations that are being raised by people within the unions, former leaders, her own colleague Rob McClelland specifically raised it in a speech in Parliament, I guess it was his way of saying to the media “please focus on this, take this seriously”.
PAUL MURRAY I think it is her own words from that transcribed interview from 1995 which has changed the complexion of this story.
JULIE BISHOP I think that is a fair comment Paul. To say that, to admit that it is common practice for unions to have slush funds, I wonder if that is the understanding of the current Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, after all he is the former head of the Australian Workers’ Union.
PAUL MURRAY Yeah and dealt with this issue, I am told, in great detail.
JULIE BISHOP Indeed, as did the current Attorney General Nicola Roxon.
PAUL MURRAY Yep, thanks Julie.
JULIE BISHOP My pleasure.
PAUL MURRAY Julie Bishop, Deputy Federal Opposition Leader.
