Gillard's accusers are left without a smoking gun

Illustration: Eric Lobbecke

IF I declared that each and every reader of The Weekend Australian were required to prove their innocence concerning a particular charge, any charge, I'd like to see them try

By definition, proving one's innocence is outside the framework of a democratic legal system. It's rather difficult to do. It is incumbent on accusers to prove guilt, not the other way around.

For months now, online campaigners have been demanding that the PM effectively prove her innocence concerning matters that not only never led to charges in a court of law against her -- the persons she did legal work for (who are alleged to have committed wrongdoings) haven't even been charged themselves.

This is a fair characterisation because for months no credible accusation was being put to the PM -- only irregularities which (politically speaking) perhaps she should have cleared up much earlier.

Having personally reviewed the mountains of information concerning the 17-year-old allegations against the PM (you would be amazed how much has been placed on the public record through the years -- in print and in parliaments), I formed the view last Friday that the PM didn't have a case to answer, making the point that unless new information surfaced, the scuttlebutt should be ignored.

However, by the time The Weekend Australian splashed with new information not previously on the public record, about a former Slater & Gordon partner now living in the US questioning the circumstances in which Julia Gillard left the firm, it was clear the PM needed to respond publicly. And throughout the week more scoops were published in this newspaper by award-winning investigative journalist Hedley Thomas, including the transcript of the interview Gillard had done with Slater & Gordon partners Peter Gordon and Geoff Shaw.

Even though Gordon has made it quite clear that in his view "there was no sufficient basis to dismiss Ms Gillard for misconduct . . . she should be accorded the benefit of the doubt and her explanation accepted", the PM needed to make a comprehensive public statement to clarify matters.

Not to prove her innocence, but to ensure that in the court of public opinion she didn't lose further skin on this matter.

In the interview Paul Kelly and I conducted with the PM on Australian Agenda last Sunday on Sky News, I said that while I believed that she had not committed any wrongdoings, she should make a statement on the matter to put it to bed.

For that free advice the PM questioned my "grand naivety", before doing exactly that on Thursday, when she answered questions on the saga for a full hour at a media conference at Parliament House.

Doing so was received positively.

Graham Richardson (a Gillard critic, to be sure) says that he won't be revisiting the issue. This paper's political editor, Dennis Shanahan, said the PM performed well, as did The Sydney Morning Herald's political editor, Peter Hartcher.

The political editor for The Age, Michelle Grattan, described the PM's defence as "credible", adding that "this affair has been raked over sufficiently". Sky's political editor David Speers said the PM had finally drawn a line under this issue.

Despite being at the vanguard of peddling this issue online in recent months, Andrew Bolt (no stranger to legal proceedings himself) didn't even need to wait for Thursday's media conference to declare on his blog: "I can't see any evidence that Gillard knowingly profited from Wilson's scam, and I am inclined to believe her denial".

That observation came after this newspaper published the transcript of her 1995 partner interview on Wednesday. It was an extremely human account of a person dealing with home renovations not being completed to her specifications (we've all been there!).

As I've said before, it was a great scoop for this paper to get its hands on the transcript, but there was no smoking gun Gillard detractors could latch on to.

All they were left with were a series of errors Gillard made in the way she dealt with the matter 17 years ago: little different to countless previous prime ministers who have had questions raised about their past.

She should have opened a file on Slater & Gordon's system to better provide the firm with legal indemnity. She shouldn't have referred to the account she provided advice on as a "slush fund". And describing it as for the purpose of workplace safety when the only link to that notion was that those campaigning for re-election intended to use workplace safety as part of their platform was weak, to say the least.

But these are relatively minor matters alongside the core charge (not that it was ever put) that the PM knowingly (or unknowingly) profited from the so-called slush fund.

That slur is comprehensively unproven, remembering that it is not the job of the PM to prove her innocence.

While much has been alleged about the circumstances surrounding Gillard's departure from Slater & Gordon, little has been said or written about the fact that at that time the firm was undergoing major changes which split the partnership and saw two distinct factions develop: those who wanted Slater & Gordon to do less union work and morph into a larger plaintiff firm, and those who wanted the links to the labour movement to continue to be the way in which the firm defined itself (as is the case at that other labour law firm Maurice Blackburn).

It was a hostile time.

Gillard fell into the latter category, which does more to explain the loss of confidence that developed between her and some partners than any conspiracy theory. Ultimately, the firm split and a number of partners left Slater & Gordon to take up positions at Maurice Blackburn. This was the primary driver of animosity, not the matter of Bruce Wilson's "slush fund".

As for the fact Gillard didn't open a file on her work on Wilson's fund, this is a less significant issue than even Gillard is willing to fight for (politically there is no point in her defending the line on this one).

Not formally opening a file on the firm's system doesn't mean that she didn't personally keep a file. It's not a case of a conspiracy that she was avoiding paperwork. Gillard just didn't log it into the Slater & Gordon system, because she was not intending to charge on the matter.

There would hardly be a law partner anywhere in the country who had not done similarly at some point in time, for a friend or a family member.

Gillard's crime -- not that you could call it that -- was that the fund she offered some assistance with setting up turned out to be highly controversial. Not through any inappropriate actions by her, mind you.

The bottom line is this: The Australian reported fascinating new information on a 17-year-old matter, which of itself is a testament to the investigative abilities of those involved. However, without something new and startling, there is no smoking gun.

The online mudslinging waged against the PM -- both prior to and during this week -- has been disgraceful. And no doubt it will continue, because the PM has been unable to do what none of us could: prove her innocence.

Peter van Onselen is a Winthrop professor at the University of Western Australia.