Gemma Jones From: The Daily Telegraph
November 27, 2012 12:00AM
She can't recall ... Prime Minister Julia Gillard during an extended press conference in Parliament House in Canberra / Pic: Gary Ramage Source: The Daily Telegraph
Ralph Blewitt revisits the house once shared by himself, Julia Gillard and Bruce Wilson / Pic: David Caird Source: The Daily Telegraph
PRIME Minister Julia Gillard was yesterday unable to categorically deny receiving $5000 from a former boyfriend at the centre of the Australian Workers Union slush fund affair.
With the 20-year-old affair threatening to overshadow the work of government, a fiery Ms Gillard addressed questions about the fund and her relationship with the disgraced Bruce Wilson.
The PM revealed she had consulted the Commonwealth Bank and had hoped to release her account transaction record but the bank only kept them for seven years.
Former AWU official Wayne Hem signed a statutory declaration claiming that Mr Wilson, after a night at a casino, asked him to put the money in Ms Gillard's bank account in mid-1995.
Mr Hem said in 1996 he told Ian Cambridge, then AWU secretary and now a Fair Work Australia Commissioner, of the alleged transaction.
When asked about Mr Hem's claim, Mr Wilson said at the weekend: "It's possible, but I don't specifically recall."
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At the time Mr Hem said he made the deposit on behalf of Mr Wilson. Ms Gillard was a Slater & Gordon partner and would have been earning about $80,000 a year.
While she said yesterday she did not recall the money being put in her account, she said that, even if Mr Wilson had given her $5000 - which today would be worth more than $8100 - it would not be wrong. She also dismissed stories about the AWU affair, claiming Australians "don't understand" them. Ms Gillard said: "On the day that claim came out publicly I referred to it as smear because it is a matter associated with my personal life.
"Whilst I'm going to answer your question, I just ask you for one moment to assume that that is true, that $5000 was put in my bank account by a person I was then in a relationship with, who the witness involved said had had a big night out at the casino. Can you piece together for me the personal wrongdoing involved in that? I doubt you can.
"On the actual assertion, I do not to the best of my knowledge, remember $5000 being put in my account."
Ms Gillard said she typically was surprised by how little money she had when she used an ATM "rather than happily surprised that there is extra".
"I do not have a memory of this money going into my account. However, it is a long time ago. So I have taken steps to try and check," she said of her approach to the Commonwealth Bank.
She described the financial relationship between herself and Mr Wilson as "garden variety" for a couple and there was not "lots of money around or lots of benefits I somehow couldn't explain."
"Nothing happened in the course of my relationship with Mr Wilson about who paid for what that you would say was in any way unusual for people in a relationship. We'd go for dinner, sometimes he'd pay, sometimes I'd pay, sometimes we'd split the bill," she said.
Ms Gillard said she ended the relationship with Mr Wilson when she heard rumours of problems within the union.
She faced questions about why she hadn't alerted the AWU around the same time of the slush fund for which she had provided legal advice for its incorporation but said she had no knowledge of its accounts or how it was used.
"You can't report things you do not know. I did not know about transactions on the accounts of the AWU workplace relations association," she said.
In parliament, Deputy Opposition Leader Julie Bishop used Question Time to focus on whether Ms Gillard had satisfied herself the establishment of the association did not breach AWU internal rules.
Ms Gillard repeated that her role was to provide legal advice to the two officials seeking to register their association, which was to be used for union election campaigning, and she had no dealings with the broader union executive.
Earlier, Ms Gillard had said she was aware of rumours - which she vigorously denied - that she received money from the union for home renovations. Ms Gillard told Slater & Gordon in an interview in September 1995 she had paid the builder $2000 and was "making arrangements to get $1780 ... to pay the rest". The transcript shows she was financially strained at the time with a mortgage and a personal loan - and had taken an advance on her salary.
