CASH was king in Australia in 1994 and 95. For a couple of years, in which mortgage rates pushed above 10 per cent and national unemployment rates were not far behind, Bruce Wilson ruled.
The union official controlled two secret slush funds, stuffed with cash from major employers who provided the work performed by members of the Australian Workers Union.
None of the money in the funds was earned in the traditional way by Mr Wilson or the members of Australia's oldest union.
It was quietly doled out to Mr Wilson's slush fund in Victoria -- the quaintly-named AWU Members Welfare Association No 1 account -- in large cheques from companies such as Woodside (through its solicitors, Phillips Fox) and construction groups Thiess, John Holland and Fluor Daniel.
Those companies and several others relied on Mr Wilson -- who as state secretary held sway over members of the AWU in Victoria and elsewhere -- to complete their major building projects without industrial stoppages.
Workplace unrest was profit-killing.
But, as Commonwealth Bank records and other documents examined by The Weekend Australian show, Mr Wilson -- who at the time was Julia Gillard's boyfriend and her client at law firm Slater & Gordon -- was a cavalier spender of slush fund cash.
He lived a high life in inner Melbourne in a Fitzroy property purchased for $230,000 in 1993 with about $100,000 from his other slush fund -- the similarly secret AWU Workplace Reform Association that Ms Gillard provided advice to help him set up.
Aside from the purchase of the trendy terrace house, Mr Wilson and his bagman, Ralph Blewitt, made numerous cash withdrawals in large lumps from the accounts of the Perth-based slush fund to finance the lifestyle.
In Melbourne, Mr Wilson repeatedly helped himself to the money in the Victorian slush fund.
Its cheque and cash management accounts had the words "Members Welfare", but the AWU's people were not its beneficiaries, nor were they even aware of it -- this was Mr Wilson's scam and pot of wealth to be plundered as he wished.
He had one other signatory to the Victorian slush fund, Jim Collins, who would subsequently disclose to the union's national joint secretary, Ian Cambridge, that Mr Wilson did what he liked. Mr Collins did what he was told.
Mr Cambridge, who called for a royal commission into the fraud in his own union, made a diary entry in which he described a July 1996 conversation with Mr Collins, "who could probably understand now the seriousness of the matter".
According to the entry, Mr Collins confided that "although he was the second signatory to 'some of those accounts' and that on occasions he might pre-sign 10 or 15 cheques in advance, he did not think that he could be accountable for what may or may not have happened with some of this money".
For Victorian police, who yesterday interviewed Mr Blewitt, and for the Prime Minister, who has repeatedly and strenuously rejected suggestions of wrongdoing by her, questions over where the money went are critical.
Mr Blewitt is understood to have told police about his role in a large and organised fraud with the help of the Perth-based slush fund, as well as his own role in the renovation of Ms Gillard's house in Abbotsford in Melbourne's east.
Police have hundreds of documents to examine. The Federal Court holds files for legal proceedings launched in 1995 and 1996 by the AWU and Mr Cambridge, supported by the union's then president, Bill Ludwig, to try to unravel a fraud perpetrated using the slush funds controlled by Mr Wilson.
One of those files contains affidavit material including bank documents obtained from the CBA. One is a $15,000 cheque for cash drawn on the Victorian slush fund, the AWU Members Welfare No 1 account, on April 27, 1995.
Mr Collins and Mr Wilson signed the cheque. The handwriting on an accompanying note later handed over by the bank to Mr Cambridge states: "5000 -- cash. K. Spyridis -- 10,000 B/chq."
Kon Spyridis is now retired and living in inner Melbourne, but at the time had a business called KM & J Spyridis and did building work around the city, including extensive work valued at more than $30,000 to refit new offices for the AWU at the request of Mr Wilson.
Mr Spyridis was introduced to Ms Gillard by AWU organiser Bill "the Greek" Telikostoglou and they were both involved in the renovations on her workers' cottage in Abbotsford.
Mr Spyridis -- a former branch organiser for the Liberal Party who worked in the fashion industry before moving into building work -- says he was not paid with bank cheques for the AWU work but today recalls Ms Gillard paying him with two bank cheques for the renovation work on her house, for amounts totalling about $3500.
His current recollection of the amount he was paid for the work on the house chimes approximately with Ms Gillard's 1995 recollection when she was interviewed by the firm's senior partner, Peter Gordon, of agreeing to pay Mr Spyridis $3780 in two tranches.
According to Ms Gillard's 1995 interview, those payments were made several months after Mr Spyridis received the bank cheque from the Victorian slush fund.
Asked about the payments he received for the renovation of the house, Mr Spyridis told The Weekend Australian: "I get my money and that's it."
Ms Gillard insisted on August 23 this year that she paid for the renovations to her own house. In 1995, however, she told her law firm in the tape-recorded interview that she could not categorically rule out whether union money or slush fund money went into the cottage, "but I can't see how it's happened".
The Prime Minister says she had no knowledge of the operations of the fund.
Ms Gillard revealed in the 1995 interview during an internal probe by the firm that she went on holiday and "Bruce, whilst I was away, decided that I should just get it done so he commenced with a group of friends demolishing the bathroom . . . "By the time I came back the bathroom had been demolished so I had no option but to get the rest of the renovations done and a series of tradespeople who Jim Collins predominantly organised, Jim Collins being an organiser at the AWU . . . a series of tradespeople came in and did the renovation . . ."
Members' fund a pot of gold official plundered at will | The Australian:
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