Labor slime machine goes after Julie Bishop

Image: Opposition Deputy Leader, Julie Bishop

Labor with its atrocious record from 2007 through till now is left without a feather to fly with as far as accomplishments are concerned, and an election is on the horizon.  As result they have been avoiding any reference to achievements for obvious reasons, and have concentrated on what they do best, personal attacks and smearing anyone who is effective against them.

Tony Abbott has been the target of most of it so far, but in the wake of the AWU slush fund/ fraud allegations, the deputy leader of the opposition, Julie Bishop has been doing some real damage to the government by asking uncomfortable questions about the role of Prime Minister Julia Gillard in the creation of fraudulent accounts, used by her boyfriend to siphon off around $400, 000 from the union.

The Gillard smear machine has come out fighting: 

Frontbencher Brendan O'Connor today attempted to turn the tables on Ms Bishop, who has spearheaded the Coalition's campaign over the Prime Minister's connections to the Australian Workers Union during her time as an industrial relations lawyer in the 1990s. 

He said the deputy Liberal leader should come clean about her own past as a lawyer, particularly when she acted for building products company CSR Ltd as it fought claims by former workers exposed to deadly asbestos fibres from its mine at Wittenoom, in Western Australia. 

“Clearly there have been some matters arising out of her role as a lawyer at CSR where she used, allegedly, procedural tactics to deny victims of asbestosis their day in court,” Mr O'Connor told the ABC TV's Insiders program. 

“Now she wants to go around spending her entire time not involving herself in foreign affairs, as she is supposed to as shadow minister, but instead seek to smear the government and the Prime Minister with unsubstantiated allegations, and I think there are some questions that she should be answering as well. 

Ms Bishop, who acted for CSR in the 1980s under her then married name Julie Gillon, told The Australian she was simply doing her job as a lawyer for CSR and denied any wrongdoing.

Of note here is that the allegations are that Bishop has been the legal representative for an unpopular cause, asbestos; not that she has violated the requirement to act with integrity toward her profession and client.  On the other hand, the allegations against Gillard are that she carried out unauthorized legal work for her boyfriend without the knowledge of her law firm against the interests of its client, the AWU, which led to a massive fraud being carried out.

The following clip details some of the mysterious matters that are coming to the surface regarding evidence going missing:

For pages, files, folders, and boxes of evidence to go missing from some of the most secure evidentiary repositories in the nation requires a great deal of reprehensibility at the highest levels of influence in Australia. It is worth asking ‘who would be able to do this?’

It is also worth asking, “Who has acted reprehensibly; the person who has acted for a politically incorrect client, or the one who has set up fraudulent accounts, given false reasons for their establishment, then failed to report violations of the law?”

Update: A fourth set of possibly incriminating files on the AWU slush fund have gone missing from court archives.