I'll see your self-confessed fraudster and raise you one pending criminal conviction

JULIA Gillard has proved she's a devious politician who couldn't lie straight in bed.

Michael Smith - Who anointed Ralph Edwin Blewitt SCF, the self-confessed fraudster?   Once you understand the SCF sobriquet, it's actually rather a compliment.   It's certainly better than waiting around for a jury to anoint by verdict.

On 11 September, 1995 Ralph's mate Julia was about to get the sack.

She was a lawyer specialising in workplace law, a partner in the industrial unit of her firm.   To
make the sacking stick, they’d have to get it right.

The interview was tape recorded.   The firm’s managing partner and general manager were present.

Julia Gillard had apparently been on restricted duties after the 14 August 1995 preliminary interview.

The 11 September interview was more formal.   It was also more complete, because by then
her boss the managing partner Peter Gordon had the secret AWUWRA file she had hidden away.

On 14 August the firm knew Gillard’s boyfriend Bruce Wilson was in serious trouble, facing a police investigation and internal charges within the union.   Julia Gillard was giving him legal advice about that until 17 August, 1995.

Just on $160,000 of Wilson/AWU slushy-money was returned to employer companies when Wilson was caught trying to transfer the cash to one of his own accounts.  But Bruce hadn’t been sprung for the Perth account, and Julia hadn’t really been sprung for her home renovations.    Bruce
knew all the details about Julia’s house - and Julia knew all the details about Bruce’s AWU-WRA and the cash.   Both of them have stayed remarkably staunch when it comes to avoiding being the dobber.   Self-interest and MAD will do that for a while.   A detente has held.

By way of background, here’s a grab from the formal interview.

PETER GORDON: All right, well, let's talk about the AWU Workplace Reform Association Account. That account, as you've said, is an account which was the account belonging to an incorporated association by the same name which was incorporated by Slater & Gordon at (Bruce) Wilson's, on Wilson's instructions following your advice to him which you
described earlier.

JULIA GILLARD: That's right.

That question was about the account, not the association.   I’d be worried about the bank account and the source of the money too if I was Peter Gordon.  (As to the instructions to incorporate the association, the fraudsters guide to setting up a patsy is working its magic here.   While
everyone maintained their silence and the conversations stayed in-house, the story
was that the AWUWRA was incorporated on Wilson’s instructions.  Now that Ralph’s telling all and Wilson and Gillard are worried, the story is that it’s Ralph Blewitt who did the deeds with
Wilson and Gillard apparently now shocked and deceived).

Much of the formal record of interview remains redacted at the discretion of the former Slater and Gordon partner Nick Styant Browne.  While we’ve not seen the whole of the interview, it’s easy to understand Peter Gordon’s displeasure.   By 11 September, 1995, he knew that his firm had advanced a $150,000 mortgage in a sham property transaction, and presumably he knew that about $100,000 had been taken from a union slush fund to provide the remainder of the money to settle the house sale. He should certainly have known about the drawer of the $67,777 cheque to complete the purchase – the AWU Workplace Reform Association.   And his firm did the conveyance, although it's hard to get a proud SandGer to stand up and take the credit.   Success has many fathers, failure is an orphan.

On 11 September, 1995, Julia Gillard said that Ralph Blewitt had the $100,000 himself.   She said that she did not know that Slater and Gordon had provided the rest itself by way of a $150,000 mortgage.   The Power of Attorney purportedly witnessed by Gillard gave Wilson authority to buy the property, but Slater and Gordon also recognised in it an unstated power used by Wilson to encumberthe property with a first mortgage in Slater and Gordon’s favour.   And the current day managing director of Slater and Gordon Andrew Grech wrote to a regulatory authority this year to
say that “Julia Gillard acted directly for Ralph Blewitt in the conveyance of the property”.

Blewitt says he hasn’t seen Gillard in person since 1995.   Until quite recently he thought they were
friends.   Back in 1995 Gillard backed him with more than words.  He was a sophisticated investor – and Slater and Gordon's other investors with surplus funds in the mortgage lending account backed him too, presumably on the sayso of the partner acting for him in the conveyance.   Now, based on no fresh meetings with him, Gillard says of Blewitt, “……a complete imbecile, an idiot, a stooge, a sexist pig, a liar, and his sister has said he’s a crook.”

Maybe that explains why he needed to grant a Power of Attorney on account of his undiagnosed imbecilicity.   Except that Wilson now says that Blewitt was the mastermind all along!

You could charge money to watch the dishonest react to honesty.  Ralph Blewitt  is much derided as a self-confessed fraudster by Ms Gillard, “you can’t believe him, he’s a self-confessed fraudster”.  That’s rich.  I am told that Ralph Edwin Blewitt has no criminal convictions.   His dealings with police and the courts are confined to a charge relating to him bringing home a souvenir from the Vietnam War, a Colt 45 pistol that he was dobbed in over.   He was given a small fine, the weapon was confiscated and he had no conviction recorded. Beyond road traffic matters, I’m told that’s it for his criminal history and antecedents.

Blewitt’s SCF was a gong Gillard gave him only after Blewitt started to tell the truth.   He’s done
his bit, now it’s time for the Fraudsters in Denial to join him.

It’s awful to see Gillard and Wilson smear Blewitt, using his own frankness and desire to come clean as a weapon to discredit him.   Ralph’s is a specific SCF too – it relates solely to his acts on the direction of the masterminds of the fraud, Wilson and his accessory.

This scandal’s only being talked about because it’s hidden.  And it’s being hidden by the people
who complain about it being talked about.   Which makes it talked about.   Anyone see a way out of the loop?

There were plenty of frauds prosecuted and finalised in Australian courts in 1996.   No one wants to report on those old and finalised crimes now.   Those spent cases don’t affect the running of the country one bit and I don’t want to talk about them.   Matter of fact my wife is sick of me talking about closed cases from my limited police service in the 1980s.   I get the message.

But The AWU Scandal is unsolved.   It's effects are current.   When a cover up in a complex and unsolved fraud case persists, it should be met each day with an ever more more vigourous  Fourth Estate digging away to uncover it.  But we don’t have one.

Meanwhile police are there, ready to receive statements, complaints and new information from any citizen who can help them to solve these crimes.   Know anyone you could nudge in the right direction?

On 23 August, 2012 Julia Gillard decided that she’d trust a few journalists in the Canberra Press Gallery and not the police.    She said she’d speak out once and once only on the frauds and she’d do it with the journos who’d clocked on in Canberra that day.   She was narky, because as she said,
“‘For many months now I have been the subject of a very sexist smear campaign." a fate that apparently befalls all those cursed with involvement in setting up slush funds or something - I didn't see the link either.   I don’t know anyone in the Sexist Offenders Squad, but I know of a very good fraud squad detective who’d like to know more about the fraud.   Somewhere there’s a real victim plaintively wailing and gnashing their teeth, “For years now, I have been the victim of a very complex and concealed fraud.”

The 23 August job didn’t make the questions stop.   Half-baked answers won’t make the questions
stop.   PM you can make the questions stop.   Make a statement, or say you can’t because you’ll incriminate yourself.  Either way, put us out of our misery about your involvement.   And there you go, problem solved.  Until you go and make comprehensive sworn statements to police you can’t complain when people talk about this series of unsolved and concealed crimes.  

You might want to call Ralph Blewitt names, but that won’t make his sworn testimony go away.  And you can’t change the documents (although I'm told they can be hidden for a while).   If you really want a break from the questions in the media, put aside a few days of your rec leave and knock up a comprehensive statement to police.

Ralph can give you their number.

I'll see your self-confessed fraudster and raise you one pending criminal conviction - Michael Smith News: