Memo to Prime Minister: please answer the questions

Eric Lobbecke

PRIME Minister, you once said News Limited had hard questions to answer. When pressed, you couldn't elaborate. Allow me to elaborate on some questions for you. Simply repeating that you have answered questions previously is a political tactic that treats voters as stupid. But we are not. You may have answered other questions long ago. But new information has raised new questions.

On ABC1's Q&A on Monday night, Graham Richardson said you don't get the best advice from your staffers but the buck stops with you. He said that you have shown a lack of sound political judgment in the way you have dealt with this issue to date. Please reconsider your strategy. Surely you don't believe that this is simply the work of feral bloggers? To be sure, a scurrilous online campaign is being waged. But completely separately, important issues are being raised by serious people in serious places. You might not like it but democracy depends on an intellectually curious media.

For a start, Robert McClelland, once a member of your own cabinet, stood up in parliament and raised issues of alleged corruption at the AWU during the time you were carrying out legal work for your then boyfriend and AWU Victorian secretary, Bruce Wilson. Senior former union leaders of the AWU have raised issues about that time. The media has a duty to scrutinise these issues. This paper takes that duty seriously, so could you answer the questions we have raised?

First, is it correct, as claimed by as your former partner, Nick Styant-Browne, in The Australian that you did not open a file when you performed work for Wilson? And if it's correct, why didn't you open a file? Do you agree that it is unusual for a partner in a law firm not to open a legal file?

This was not a case of work not proceeding. You conducted legal work for Wilson. You set up an entity called the AWU Workplace Reform Association. You drafted the association's rules. Between 1992 and 1996, the AWU knew nothing about the AWU Workplace Reform Association. Is it true that the AWU only found out by chance? The partners at Slater & Gordon knew nothing about the work done until shortly before you resigned. Is it true that they only found out by chance? Is it true that you performed your work in such a way that neither Slater & Gordon nor the national office of the AWU knew anything about the AWU Workplace Reform Association?

Do you agree that the unfortunate result of your actions appears to be that allegedly corrupt behaviour was shielded from scrutiny for several years?

Another matter, Prime Minister. Styant-Browne revealed in his statement to The Weekend Australian that two partners at Slater and Gordon conducted a taped interview with you in 1995 once they became concerned that Wilson had allegedly misappropriated money from this entity, the AWU Workplace Reform Association. The question, Prime Minister is this: is it correct, as Styant-Browne has said, that you referred in that taped interview to the association as a "slush fund"?

It is alleged that Wilson and AWU bagman Ralph Blewitt used the AWU Workplace Reform Association to extract money from large companies for their own personal benefit. It is alleged that in 1993 money from the association was used to purchase a house at 85 Kerr Street, Fitzroy. You attended the auction, PM. The house was bought in Blewitt's name using funds from the association. Wilson lived in the house.

When did you, Prime Minister, become aware that the association was being used as a slush fund, contrary to the objects of that association?

The police in Victoria and Western Australia investigated the activities of Wilson and Blewitt. Did you do everything in your power to help the police in their investigations and make a statement to them? Do you find it odd, Prime Minister, that we still don't know what happened to all of the funds held by the AWU Workplace Reform Association?

Another question. Please tell us what you make of Styant-Browne's claim over the weekend that during that taped interview you "could not categorically rule out personally benefiting from the misappropriated funds".

You have said previously that you were young and naive. Prime Minister, you were 35 years old. That is not so young. And what do you say about the statement by Peter Gordon, another former partner at Slater & Gordon, published in this paper yesterday, that said your relationships with the firm's partners had "fractured, and trust and confidence evaporated". He said you were accorded the benefit of the doubt and your explanation accepted but that "nevertheless the partnership was extremely unhappy with Ms Gillard considering that proper vigilance had not been observed and that (her) duties of utmost good faith to (her) partners especially as to timely disclosure had not been met."

Matters about good faith, trust and confidence - even 17 years ago - go to the heart of a person's integrity. That's why these issues are relevant to your conduct as Prime Minister today.

Had questions arisen about the professional integrity of former prime minister John Howard, this paper would have pursued the matter, just as it pursued many stories that the Howard government didn't much like. The AWB oil-for wheat scandal. Tampa. Children overboard. And one suspects you would have pursued it too, with your trademark steeliness and determination.

Had the current questions concerned Howard, much of the Fairfax press and the ABC would be hurling questions at the PM. Curiously, these same outlets are not very curious at all about your time at Slater & Gordon, even in light of the new information.

After the partners of Slater & Gordon put out a statement over the weekend stating that their 1995 review "found nothing which contradicted the information provided by Ms Gilllard at the time", Michelle Grattan from The Age told Fran Kelly on Radio National on Monday morning that "I think on what we know at the moment that should be the end of it". On ABC1's Insider program on Sunday morning, host Barrie Cassidy mentioned the new information only to dismiss it just as quickly.

Mark Latham chose to make fun of the matter in The Australian Financial Review yesterday. Yet only last month, the former Labor leader wrote a very thoughtful piece about union corruption at the HSU. Even this paper's own Peter Van Onselen declared on Sky News's Australian Agenda on Sunday that he had made up his mind up on the matter.

Case closed? Surely not. Sections of the media have their own questions to answer as to why they are not doing a better job. Just as you, Prime Minister, can do better than you have done to date. Please reconsider. Please answer the questions.