Courtesy of Piers Akerman/Daily Telegraph:

For more articles by Piers go to; http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/piersakerman/

 

Piers Akerman –, Tuesday, November, 27, 2012,

JULIA Gillard – according to Julia Gillard – split from her AWU union boss boyfriend Bruce Wilson when she learnt he was improperly using the money from the slush fund she set up for him and his henchman Ralph Blewitt.

On the 7.30 Report, he was denying he ever ripped off the fund she set up.

Why then did she think he was misusing the moolah and why did she explain her actions away as a result of being “young and naive”?

That’s the problem with the now multiple stories being trotted out by Gillard, Blewitt and Wilson about that nice little earner, the AWU Workplace Reform Association.

No-one can agree about its function, no-one can agree about the use of the funds and no-one can agree about the final bust-up.

In television dramas, this is the point where the suspects are taken into different interview rooms and forced to sweat it out, each hoping that the other will stick to a previously agreed script.

The problem in the case of the AWUWRA is that the players fell out and didn’t agree to the main talking points.

Gillard has said it was a slush fund and has threatened legal action to anyone outside the ABC who suggests it was something else.

Blewitt says it was a cache of cash used to finance Wilson’s lifestyle at the time he and Gillard were an item.

Part of the money was used to buy the Melbourne house that was placed in his name but used by Wilson, and, according to Wilson, occasionally visited by Gillard.

No-one seems to know what happened to the proceeds of the sale of the property when the AWUWRA fell apart, which also seems to have happened to poorly wrapped blocks of cash Blewitt has buried in his garden. According to Wilson, that is.

On one point the trio agree: Gillard was the legal advisor on the establishment of the slush fund and she even helped fill out some of the forms.

Former AWU employee Wayne Hem who said he deposited $5000 in Julia Gillard’s personal bank account for Wilson – a sum which Gillard cannot recall – may have performed the task, Wilson confirmed, but his memory is pretty rusty, too.

In fact, there is quite a bit he cannot recall, though he is adamant that everything was always above board.

Which means that other senior figures in the AWU who wanted to call for a royal commission into his activities and the function of the slush fund must have been totally misguided.

Gillard has asked us to make a choice between her version and that of offered by Blewitt.

Given her record as a public liar on a seriously major scale, and given that Blewitt has been prepared to place his liberty in jeopardy by coming forward, I would place more trust in the former soldier no matter how much the grubs from the ALP try to smear him.

Anyone who knows anything about the operations of the ALP knows that it would be foolish to discount a defector’s tale.

Wilson has reluctantly come forward after weeks of pressure.

Quite simply, his version of events is far rosier than that offered by his former lover.

Far from allaying doubts, he has fuelled greater suspicion that something stinks about this affair and Gillard’s involvement in it.