Saturday, 21 July 2012

The Wilson scandal: now the Cambridge affidavit

Andrew Bolt,Herald Sun (Australia)
"Ian Cambridge was a joint national secretary of the Australian Workers Union when he discovered an AWU state secretary Bruce Wilson had been siphoning off $400,000. Cambridge also learned Wilson’s girlfriend, Julia Gillard, had done legal work for Wilson and the AWU as a partner of Slater and Gordon.
(For extensive background on this case, listen to Alan Jones’ interview yesterday with Michael Smith. More background here. Note also that Gillard has said she was “young and naive” at the time, being only in her mid 30s and a partner in a major law firm. She denies knowing what Wilson was up to. She denies doing anything wrong or benefiting from Wilson’s schemes. She has in the past two years refused two requests from me and many by others to respond to specific questions.)
Cambridge was represented at the time by solicitor Robert McClelland, who was recently sacked from Cabinet by Gillard. McClelland this month told Parliament the Wilson case convinced him tougher laws were needed to ensure that money wrongly taken from union members by officials was returned. He also asserted an unnamed “third party” may have benefited from Wilson’s scheme. Cambridge is now a commissioner of Fair Work Australia, having been appointed by Julia Gillard on 2009. But in 1996 he signed this scathing affidavit on the Wilson scandal."

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