I would have done it differently, Julia Gillard tells royal commission

JULIA Gillard has admitted she would have acted differently in setting up a slush fund for her former union boyfriend, Bruce Wilson.

JULIA Gillard has admitted she would have acted differently in setting up a slush fund for her former union boyfriend but said she lacks a “time machine”.

The former Labor prime minister today stuck to her past story, denying she did anything wrong in helping set up the slush fund for Bruce Wilson when she was a lawyer and he was a leader of the Australian Workers Union in 1992.

Ms Gillard also denied that she received money from Mr Wilson, or from the fund, to pay for renovations on her Melbourne home.

Appearing as a much anticipated witness at the royal commission into union corruption, Ms Gillard said she believed she was helping Mr Wilson establish an entity to raise funds for union elections when she prepared documents for the “AWU Workplace Reform Association” to be accepted as an incorporated association in Western Australia.

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Ms Gillard at the time was a salaried partner with Melbourne legal firm Slater & Gordon, and she started a relationship with Ms Wilson several months before helping him create the fund.

The royal commission has heard allegations that Mr Wilson, with his union sidekick Ralph Blewitt, used the fund as a non-union bank account corruptly to receive $380,000 from the Thiess constructions company in Perth.

It has also heard allegations that $90,000 from the fund were fraudulently used as the deposit to buy a Melbourne house in Kerr Street, Fitzroy, as a residence for Mr Wilson, and that money from the fund may have been used to pay for renovations on Ms Gillard’s Melbourne home in Abbotsford.

Ms Gillard insisted today that she did not know money from the fund was used to pay for the Fitzroy property. She attended the auction with Mr Wilson, and was involved in conveyancing work and a power of attorney document related to the sale.

She insisted she paid for renovations on her own home herself, and dismissed the account of one tradesman, Athol James, who has said that Ms Gillard told him Mr Wilson was paying for the work.

“All payments made for renovations on my property were from my own money,” she said.

Ms Gillard has previously admitted that she did not create a file with her legal firm detailing her work on the fund. She also did not tell Slater & Gordon partners about the work she did for Mr Wilson. Nor did she inform the AWU, which was her firm’s client and her client as an industrial lawyer.

Ms Gillard also did not tell Slater & Gordon partners – until controversy over the matter blew up in 1995, leading to a formal interview with the firm’s top partners and her abrupt departure from the firm – that she was involved in arranging the conveyancing and power of attorney for Mr Wilson.

Jeremy Stoljar SC, the counsel assisting the royal commission, quizzed Ms Gillard about hiccups in the process of incorporating the WRA fund for Mr Wilson – including a query from the Commissioner for Corporate Affairs in Perth about whether or not it was a trade union.

Ms Gillard told Mr Stoljar that she confirmed to the office of Corporate Affairs by letter that the fund was not a union. She said she never sought to mislead in preparing documents that set out the association’s primary objects as promoting workplace reform and training.

One clause of the fund did allow for the association to be used as an election fund raising entity, she claimed.

Ms Gillard said she played a role only in the creation of the fund, and had no connections with its operations afterwards.

She did not know, she said, that Mr Wilson and Mr Blewitt sent out the first invoice for Thiess to make regular payments to the WRA fund on April 30, 1992 – before the fund was legally incorporated.

Mr Stoljar pressed Ms Gillard on whether she checked with the national executive of the AWU about the use of the union’s name in the incorporated association. “No I didn’t,” Ms Gillard said.

The former PM said that she did not open a legal file on setting up the fund – which was normal practice for work done – because she had done much more significant work for other unions that did not involve one.

She would have spent a total of “three, four, five hours at most” working on the fund, she said. Work was often done for unions at Slater & Gordon without charging.

“Mr Stoljar, I can assure you that I did more substantial jobs than this for free for trade unions during my days at Slater and Gordon,” Ms Gillard said.

Ms Gillard denied that anything at the time led her to conclude the fund would be used to “mislead people”.

Mr Stoljar asked whether she thought it would have been appropriate to approach the AWU, as Slater & Gordon’s client, to check if authorisation was given for using the union name.

“Oh, none of us get to go in a time machine and go backwards,” Ms Gillard said.

“Obviously if one got to do the whole thing again you would do things differently given what I know now that I did not know at the time.”

Allegations surrounding her role in setting up the fund for Ms Wilson, and claims about whether or not money was used to pay for her home renovations, have followed Ms Gillard for two decades and dogged her term as prime minister.

During earlier commission hearings this year, Mr Stoljar signalled that Mr Wilson and Mr Blewitt could face possible criminal charges over conspiracy and fraud related to the slush fund. Ms Gillard faces no accusations of criminal wrongdoing. The matter is currently being investigated by Victoria Police.

The counsel assisting asked the former PM today why she did not “squarely” say in the proposed objects of the association that it was intended for raising funds for re-election.

“Because in the discussions we’ve just had, Mr Stoljar, I thought there were other reasons (as well) for incorporating an association,” she replied.

In earlier evidence today, a former senior official of the Health Services Union changed his previous recollection that Ms Gillard had offered to create a similar slush fund for him to the one she set up for Mr Wilson.

Rob Elliott, a former HSU national secretary and close ally of union whistleblower Kathy Jackson, said he had changed his mind after talking to his wife, Labor upper house MP Kaye Darveniza, over the past fortnight.

In a statement he wrote in 2012 that Mr Elliott today described as “a bit of therapy . . . to get things off my chest”, he claimed that Ms Gillard offered to create a fund in late 1989 or early 1990 that would “ostensibly” be for the purpose of promoting occupational health and safety – but would really be “to raise funds for the re-election in the HSU of the officers of that entity”.

Mr Elliott said he now realised he had a false memory after speaking to his wife over the past fortnight. He was acutely embarrassed, he said, and issued an apology to Ms Gillard for any distress or discomfort he had caused.

No entity was created by Ms Gillard for Mr Elliott or others at the HSU. Mr Elliott originally claimed in 2012 that Ms Gillard’s supposed offer “seemed an exotic and suspect arrangement”.

Recently Mr Elliott, who said today he was retired, has been in dispute with the current leadership of the HSU over a claim for payment of a $150,000-a-year contract over four years that was discontinued when the union was demerged during the corruption scandal involving convicted HSU fraudster Michael Williamson.

Ms Darveniza told the commission today that Ms Gillard had many meetings with her and her husband over the years.

She said Ms Gillard may have provided advice about “voluntary contributions to a branch re-election fund” – but she said her recollections were difficult considering they related to events of 25 years ago.