The skeletons are rattling Julia Gillard-BoltA

The skeletons are rattling Julia Gillard by: Andrew Bolt From: Herald Sun June 25, 2012 12:00AM

JULIA Gillard sacked only one of the ministers who backed Kevin Rudd in February's leadership brawl.

Now her victim, former Attorney-General Robert McClelland, is making her pay a high price.
"I know the Prime Minister is quite familiar with this area of the law, as lawyers in the mid-1990s we were involved in a matter representing opposing clients," said former federal attorney-general Robert McClelland.


Now her victim, former Attorney-General Robert McClelland, is making her pay a high price.
He's revived a 1990s union scandal that Gillard must have thought she'd buried - one involving her then boyfriend Bruce Wilson, accused of misappropriating $500,000.
This is a story a furious Gillard last year managed to shut down, shouting in private calls to newspaper executives and obtaining the retraction of an entire column in The Australian.
Two journalists - veteran commentator Glenn Milne and Fairfax radio's Michael Smith, a former policeman - even lost their jobs trying to report it.
For at least two months, McClelland has debated what to say about the Wilson case, which has disturbed him.



And in Parliament on Thursday, he finally did speak up - saying just enough to hint at one reason he may not think Gillard should be Prime Minister.
He spoke during debate on the Government's Registered Organisations Bill, brought in to crack down on corrupt union officials in the wake of the Health Services Union affair, in which former HSU secretary Craig Thomson, now a backbencher, was alleged to have misappropriated $500,000 himself.
McClelland told Parliament the Bill did not go far enough, and should also force the guilty to pay back what they'd taken.
Then came the sting.
McClelland said his thoughts were influenced by a case involving Gillard when she was a solicitor.

"I know the Prime Minister is quite familiar with this area of the law, as lawyers in the mid-1990s we were involved in a matter representing opposing clients.
"Indeed, my involvement in that matter has coloured much of my thinking."
McClelland specifically cited one of many legal moves in an Australian Workers Union factional brawl at the time, with AWU Victorian secretary Bruce Wilson named as a respondent.
McClelland is listed as a solicitor in that matter, but Gillard or her firm are not, suggesting McClelland was referring generally to the union fighting then, which included a battle over how far to pursue Wilson for money he'd allegedly siphoned off from companies into bank accounts with names suggesting they were for AWU "workplace reform".
The Victorian Parliament was told a decade ago that $500,000 was involved, and much of that has never been recovered. McClelland's point.
One AWU official McClelland represented, Ian Cambridge, even called for a royal commission, but the union ran dead on the case and no one was charged.
Gillard appointed Cambridge a Fair Work Australia commissioner in 2009. Gillard is involved in the scandal not just because she was Wilson's partner, but also because she gave him legal advice, with her firm Slater & Gordon acting for his union.
Bank accounts attached to an "AWU Workplace Reform Association Inc" set up for him - an association the AWU head office knew nothing about - were then used to siphon money from big business to Wilson.
The Prime Minister refused my invitation to comment, but has in the past insisted she acted lawfully, did not know what Wilson was doing with those accounts, and did not profit from them.
"Whether or not Mr Wilson was a client of mine is irrelevant," she has said, adding she was "young and naive", being at the time in her mid-30s and a Slater & Gordon partner.
What McClelland started last Thursday, Liberal frontbencher George Brandis and the Nationals' Barnaby Joyce took up in the Senate the next day. Joyce homed in on the bank accounts used in her boyfriend's scheme.
"Any competent solicitor would start asking those questions. Who is setting these up? What is the purpose of these accounts? What is the source of these funds?" Joyce told the Senate.
"They would definitely be the questions that a partner of a law firm would ask, especially if they were the ones drawing up the accounts."
JOYCE added: "The defence given by the Prime Minister is that she was young and naive. Is that believable?"
I doubt this scandal will go far while Gillard refuses to answer specific questions - and while many Canberra journalists refuse to ask them.
That Wilson is saying nothing also helps. Celebrity agent Max Markson tried to sign him up, but failed. But if McClelland says more ...