Doorstop - Parliament House
29 Nov 2012
Transcipt SUBJECTS: AWU Scandal
E&OE................................
The Hon Christopher Pyne MP: The revelations in the newspapers this morning about the unredacted elements of the Slater and Gordon exit interview transcript have dramatically increased the pressure on the Prime Minister in two very material ways. Firstly, the Prime Minister spent much of this week saying that she felt she was dealing with the union – with the Australian Workers’ Union – because she was dealing with officials from the Australian Workers’ Union – Bruce Wilson and Ralph Blewitt. She told that to the Parliament in answers to questions, which makes me think that she must have forgotten that in the letter that she wrote to the Western Australian Corporate Affairs Commission, she specifically says to the Western Australian Corporate Affairs Commission that this is not an entity associated with the union. Those two comments are not consistent. In one, she was enabling the registration of the association, by convincing the Western Australian Corporate Affairs Commission that the Australian Workers’ Union Workplace Reform Association was not an entity associated with the union. In question time this week she told Parliament that she felt she was dealing with the Australian Workers’ Union because she was dealing with officials from the Australian Workers’ Union. In fact I think at one point she said Ralph Blewitt and Bruce Wilson were the Australian Workers’ Union because they were the secretaries of it. It’s a very significant blow to the Prime Minister.
Secondly, of course, this week she has steadfastly avoided saying that she did not write to the Western Australian Corporate Affairs Commission, because we now know, of course, that she knew that she did write to the Western Australian Corporate Affairs Commission. So in fact, her letter to the Western Australian Corporate Affairs Commission assuring them that this was not a trade union associated with the AWU and was prepared to meet the objects of the association is the reason why the Australian Workers’ Union Workplace Reform Association was registered by the Western Australian Corporate Affairs Commission, and because it was registered it was able to open bank accounts, and because it was able to open bank accounts it was able to receive money from businesses like Thiess and elsewhere to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. So the idea that the Prime Minister has created, in press conferences and in the parliament, that she had a passing interest in this association, that she had a light touch involvement with it - clearly , without her involvement, without her letter convincing the Western Australian Corporate Affairs Commission of its bona fides, the association would not have been established and the fraud could not have been committed.
Journalist: Is her position now untenable?
Pyne: I think her position is entirely untenable. If the Prime Minister had any respect for the Parliament, for the Australian public, for the Labor caucus, she would resign as Prime Minister today and allow the Labor Party to select a new leader and to move on to put this sordid mess behind us.
Journalist: Are you saying she has been involved in fraudulent activity?
Pyne: I’m saying that the revelations today from the transcript of the Slater & Gordon exit interview makes her position entirely untenable. Her position this week has been that she thought she was dealing with the Australian Workers’ Union and that’s why she acted in the way she did as a solicitor. The letter to the Western Australian Corporate Affairs Commission makes it entirely clear that she was convincing the Western Australian Corporate Affairs Commission that it wasn’t associated with the union and she has said that in Parliament. Now she hasn’t just said that in press conferences. Secondly, she said she had a passing involvement in this association but she wrote a letter that attested to its bona fides. She wrote a letter that convinced the Western Australian Corporate Affairs Commission to register it and in the exit interview transcript she said she didn’t ask anybody else at Slater & Gordon about it. Now, I’m not Hercule Poirot but I can work out what’s gone on here.
Journalist: Mr Pyne, there is a bit of an inconsistency in what you just said there. What the PM said in her Press Conference earlier this week was that she didn’t need permission from the national executive of the AWU because she was dealing with state based senior officials, so that’s not quite the same thing. She was saying that “I’m dealing with these guys,I don’t need to deal with the national executive”. That is not actually inconsistent with her then writing to the Western Australian Corporate Affairs Commission and saying that this is not a union entity in that she had permission from union officials to establish the fund and they had said to her that this is not a slush fund and then she made the same statement to the WA Commissioner.
Pyne: If you are right, and I am prepared to accept you might be, if you are right why did she tell the Western Australian Corporate Affairs Commission that a body called the Australian Workers’ Union Workplace Reform Association was not a union entity? Because one of the tenets of the Associations Incorporations Act 1987 is, of course, you can’t use titles that mislead. So whatever way you cut this issue, the Prime Minister’s position has become entirely untenable.
Journalist: What about the revelations that she cut and pasted the union, or the association’s rules rather, do you think that that’s, I mean a bit absurd?
Pyne: Look I think that’s, I mean It’s not very professional but I don’t think it’s as important as the other two points I’ve been making.
Journalist: As Julie Bishop has been prosecuting this case all week, why are you out here this morning and not Julie?
Pyne: Well Julie might well be coming out to do the doors, I’m a bit of an early riser.
Journalist: On this issue do you think that the revelations that have emerged today, this is now the smoking gun in this ongoing saga?
Pyne: Well I don’t want to use a phrase like smoking gun because it almost trivialises the issue and I don’t think this is a trivial revelation. I mean this is this second shoe to drop to use a different phrase. The Prime Minister would have been aghast that Nick Styant-Browne has obviously decided because of Bruce Wilson’s interview on the 7:30 report that he has given away his client privilege and therefore he was able to release other parts of the exit interview transcript. That’s the last thing the Prime Minister would ever have wanted or ever expected. Now it is a mystery to us all why the letter itself disappeared from State archives in Western Australia, but now I think we are starting to see reasons why that might have happened.
ENDS