Hedley Thomas:
When Julia Gillard’s former boyfriend and client Bruce Wilson discovered the contents of several hundred documents relating to him and seized under search warrant from law firm Slater & Gordon by Victoria Police’s Fraud Squad eight months ago, he went on the front foot…
The documents have not yet been seen by Senior Sergeant Ross Mitchell and his team of detectives. This is because the evidence has been sealed and held in custody by Victoria’s courts since being taken away from Slater & Gordon in boxes by the police…
Now here is the rub: police are expected to postpone laying charges until Wilson’s bid to keep the documents secret has been exhausted. And as the legal battle has been escalated to Victoria’s Supreme Court, it will not be resolved until June at the earliest.
What this means for the Labor Party, Gillard (who has always asserted she did not know the slush fund would be used in any wrongdoing), Bill Shorten and other potential witnesses is nothing stands in the way of the new royal commission investigating the AWU slush-fund scandal.
There are no sub judice issues because nobody has been charged over the slush fund.
Former High Court judge Dyson Heydon can fulfil Tony Abbott’s pledge to run a judicial inquiry into a scandal journalists, and large media organisations, have been threatened and bullied for reporting. Wilson’s strategy has given the commission an opening to use its powers and rules of evidence. Witnesses can be compelled to give evidence under oath.