Bob Hawke estate row: Widow Blanche d’Alpuget blasted for public auction
The war over Bob Hawke’s estate has taken another turn after the late prime minister’s grandson attacked his widow, Blanche d’Alpuget, for selling off his items at a public auction.
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The war over Bob Hawke’s estate has become even more ugly after the late prime minister’s grandson attacked his widow, Blanche d’Alpuget, for selling off his belongings at a public auction.
According to court documents seen by The New Daily, Mr Hawke’s grandson Paul Dillon texted Ms d’Alpuget when he discovered the auction was going ahead.
“Blanche, are you kidding with this auction?” he wrote, according to the documents which have been filed to the NSW Supreme Court.
He referred to a selection of 10 paintings by artist Harry Bilson which were sold.
He said: “Selling all the Harry Bilsons? No thought to ask the family to take furniture or anything?!!
“Don’t you have a limit?”
Ms d’Alpuget replied in the text messages she had forwarded the messaged to someone else because “I find it threatening”.
When Mr Dillon asked her which part was threatening she replied on test message: “The suggestion that I had no right to auction stuff that is legally mine.”
Mr Dillon replied that his message was not threatening and claimed that Mr Hawke had told him he could have the Harry Bilson painting Fairground Carousel, which sold for $7,800.
Ms d’Alpuget sold Mr Hawke’s possessions for $671,630 in August, after he died aged 89 in May.
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The auction also upset his daughter Rosslyn Dillon and the text messages appeared in documents as part of her claim to $4.2 million of Mr Hawke’s estate.
The claim comes after Mr Hawke’s daughter has made a claim that he urged her not to tell police she had been raped by one of his union friends.
Rosslyn Dillon, 59, has made the shock allegation in a Supreme Court affidavit, which emerged over the weekend.
In it, she claims Mr Hawke told her to keep quiet because it would affect his hopes to become Prime Minister of Australia.
Ms Dillon, who is a former heroin addict, is seeking a $4 million share of his estate which was left to his second wife, Blanche d’Alpuget.
Ms Dillon told The New Daily she told her father she was raped three times by his colleague and confidant Bill Landeryou when she worked for him in a job her father helped secure for her during the 1980s.
She alleges Mr Hawke said: “I can’t have any controversies right now. I am sorry but I am challenging for the leadership of the Labor Party. You can’t go to the police.”
Federal Labor’s Deputy Leader Tanya Plibersek has refused to comment on the allegations.
“What I would say in the most general terms is that anybody who has been the victim of a sexual assault should be encouraged to take the matter to the police,” she said.
“I am not going to speculate on something I have only read about in the papers and is now before the courts.”