JULIA Gillard has suffered a setback in her bid to demolish allegations she received “wads of cash” from a corrupt union boss boyfriend in the 1990s, after the evidence of two key witnesses was accepted as reliable. The counsel assisting the royal commission into union corruption, Jeremy Stoljar SC, yesterday dismissed the former Labor prime minister’s argument her evidence should be given more weight than that of Wayne Hem, a former Australian Workers’ Union staffer, and Athol James, a retired builder who helped to renovate Ms Gillard’s home. The only plus for Ms Gillard in Mr Stoljar’s official reply to her legal response to his recommendations was the counsel assisting’s slight tempering of savage criticism that Ms Gillard could have helped prevent fraud by her then boyfriend Bruce Wilson if she had been more rigorous as a lawyer in setting up a slush fund for him. Mr Stoljar appears to stick with his finding that Ms Gillard’s legal work on the fund was “questionable” — but he accepts Ms Gillard’s submission that it would still have been possible for Mr Wilson and Mr Blewitt to “achieve their aims by other means” if the future prime minister had acted differently. The counsel assisting has recommended to Royal Commissioner Dyson Heydon QC, who will hand down an interim report on December 15, that Mr Wilson and his former AWU sidekick Ralph Blewitt face charges of criminal fraud and conspiracy arising from the AWU Workplace Reform Association that Ms Gillard helped them set up. Despite criticism of Ms Gillard’s conduct and a finding that Mr Wilson paid for some of her home renovations, Mr Stoljar accepts Ms Gillard was not involved in criminal conduct and only later became aware that her then boyfriend’s slush fund was used to commit fraud. Sticking with his view that Mr Hem and Mr James were telling the truth, Mr Stoljar yesterday gave “no probative force” to Ms Gillard’s request in a submission this month “to give significant weight to (her) good character and reputation” and to consider that the commission had little or no evidence about the character and reputation of two witnesses with accounts that conflicted with her account. The counsel assisting said that while Ms Gillard was someone who had “enjoyed a long and immensely successful career in public life”, the inference could not be drawn that because Mr Hem and Mr James were “private persons” without power and influence that they were “not of good character and reputation”. No evidence was called about their characters in cross-examination, Mr Stoljar said, and they were under no obligation to positively prove it. Mr Stoljar rejected Ms Gillard’s claim that some of Mr Hem’s evidence was “strongly suggestive of recent invention”, saying it was difficult to understand any possible basis on which Mr Hem would “deliberately give false evidence on oath”. “Mr Hem’s demeanour when giving evidence was of a person doing his best to remember what occurred. He was not cross-examined to the effect that he was ‘inventing’ his evidence. As will be recalled, Mr Wilson was careful not to deny that he had given Mr Hem $5000 in cash to deposit in Ms Gillard’s account.” Mr Stoljar gave Mr Hem’s evidence further credibility by contrasting it with the inconsistencies of Con Spiridis, a builder whose “recollection of events is clearly unreliable”. In another blow to Ms Gillard’s response submission, Mr Stoljar disputed her claim it was “inherently unlikely” that she would have told Mr James “in detail about intimate personal financial matters” to the effect that Mr Wilson was paying for renovations on her house. On the contrary, Mr Stoljar said, what Mr James had said Ms Gillard raised with him were not intimate personal financial matters, but remarks about “how payment of invoices would be effected”. In other formal replies, Mr Stoljar slapped down the claim of Health Services Union official Kathy Jackson that he had departed from a planned “theme” of dealing with her treatment as a corruption whistleblower. He noted Ms Jackson’s barrister had said on August 28 he did not contend she was “ambushed” — as she had claimed in July — when he questioned Ms Jackson about her own alleged misuse of union funds. Only this month had Ms Jackson’s lawyer said her ambush complaint “has a degree of validity”. Mr Stoljar rejected claims by the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union that the commission had been inconsistent by recommending charges against its officials when there was civil court action occurring, but refraining from pursuing Ms Jackson in areas of ongoing court action. theaustralian.au/national-affairs/industrial-relations/witnesses-setback-for-julia-gillard-at-union-royal-commission/story-fn59noo3-1227134934267
Posted on: Wed, 26 Nov 2014 12:34:41 +0000
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