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Police Minister, Oz PM Julia Gillard is "Pathetic!"
by street Wednesday, Aug 24 2011, 11:35pm
international / social/political / other press

So what else is new?

Julia Gillard has in her short tenure in the highest office in the land proven herself to be a brazen LIAR, treasonous, incompetent, servile to banking and minority interests, detested by the people and generally "pathetic." After signing off on FIVE (un-mandated) full scale US military bases, which makes Australia a PRIMARY nuclear target, she clearly MUST be removed from office by any means available before she can inflict more damage on the people and nation. Full report from the SMH follows:

"Pathetic," Juliar Gillard
"Pathetic," Juliar Gillard

NSW Police Minister Michael Gallacher says Prime Minister Julia Gillard is "pathetic" and Labor has tarnished the reputation of Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione over the Craig Thomson scandal.

Mr Gallacher fired at state Labor on Thursday during question time in the upper house, following accusations Mr Scipione had interfered in the union credit card affair enveloping Mr Thomson.

"I'm incredibly annoyed in the way [in] which you've hung him (Mr Scipione) out there and that pathetic prime minister who went on Sky TV this morning and had a go at him again," Mr Gallacher said.

"It's an absolute disgrace."

NSW Police are considering allegations that a union credit card issued to Mr Thomson was used for cash withdrawals and to pay for escort services and lavish meals, but police are yet to launch an investigation.

Ms Gillard told reporters in Canberra that she was "deeply concerned" about Liberal senator George Brandis having telephoned Mr Gallacher before sending Mr Scipione information about Mr Thomson.

"Our system of democracy, our system of government, relies on the fact that office bearers like police commissioners, independently of political processes, exercise their best judgment," she said.

But Mr Gallacher accused Ms Gillard of attempting to infer that Mr Scipione may be susceptible to government ministers.

"The dog whistle, the inference is that the commissioner has allowed himself to have had political pressure applied to him with respect to the matter involving the member for Dobell," Mr Gallacher said.

The minister reiterated that he acted appropriately when he contacted Mr Scipione to inform him that Mr Brandis said he would be providing the commissioner with information about Mr Thomson.

"The commissioner indicated that if he did receive any correspondence it would be treated like any other referral," Mr Gallacher said.

"And that is the process that I took at the time, believing it to be the proper process."

© 2011 AAP


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Thomson affair could sink Gillard Government
by Nick O'Malley and Phillip Coorey via stan - SMH Friday, Aug 26 2011, 8:16am

The Craig Thomson affair began in a factional brawl but could bring down a government.

When the parliamentary bells summoned MPs to Question Time at 1.55pm on Thursday, Labor members trudged towards the House of Representatives resigned and demoralised. ''I really hope the sex was good,'' muttered one minister.

The allegations that MP Craig Thomson had spent union money on prostitutes while national secretary of the Health Services Union had pushed the Gillard government to the brink.

''She told us it would be bad, not this bad, but bad,'' another minister said on Tuesday as the latest Newspoll confirmed the government's primary vote to be mired below 30 per cent.

It wasn't supposed to be like this.

In February, Gillard told her cabinet it was going to be an extremely difficult next six to eight months because of contentious policy challenges, starting with the imminent announcement of the carbon tax.

Against the odds, however, the government had a reasonable five-week winter recess, a chance to get its breath. The indefatigable Tony Abbott had gone overseas and MPs reported the carbon tax issue was losing its sting. Even if voters still opposed it, they seemed less obsessed, less angry.

The government used the break to focus on traditional Labor policy areas - health, the disabled, aged care.

Gillard's personal numbers improved in the latest Herald/Nielsen poll, published a week before the August 21 anniversary of last year's federal election.

They were significant shifts, albeit coming off a low base, and Labor's primary vote, at 28 per cent, was 10 percentage points lower than at the election.

It wasn't much, but for a battered government it was important. There was hope. When you are this far down in politics, you seize on anything.

Then, suddenly, allegations first revealed in the Herald two years ago resurfaced and sparked a frenzy of reporting that began sucking the life out of the government.

THE Thomson affair doesn't begin with the 2009 newspaper stories, nor really even with Thomson's alleged extravagances between 2002 and 2007, but in a bitter factional war within the right wing of the Victorian branch of the Labor Party.

And you thought the NSW mob were bad.

Thomson, a former assistant secretary of the Health and Research Employees Association of NSW, was elected national secretary of the HSU in 2002.

It was a tough gig. Even by union standards the HSU was hopelessly fractured and factionalised. It had a string of state-based branches - four in Victoria alone - which barely tolerated a national executive.

Much of the energy and resources it should have been devoting to the 77,000 hospital clerks, orderlies and cleaners it represented were dissipated in its Byzantine structure and the intrigues it fostered.

Thomson set to work unifying and rebranding the union and, according to some who worked closely with him, he enjoyed considerable success. The union became a more effective lobbying machine.

But the power struggle at its core never waned.

At the HSU's head office in Victoria, Thomson shared office space with Jeff and Kathy Jackson, a pair who though divorced remained political allies, determined to seize and hold control of the powerful Victorian No. 1 branch for their right-wing faction.

Thomson might have known he was heading into murky water. As far back as 1998 it had been reported that the then secretary, left-winger Jan Armstrong, had been accused by Jeff Jackson, the union's national liaison officer, of misusing union funds and financial mismanagement. She denied the allegations.

In 2007 Thomson left the union and returned to NSW to contest and win the federal seat of Dobell on the state's mid north coast. The following year the power struggle in the union turned mean and public.

In November 2008 HSU president Pauline Fegan was suspended, accused of bullying by Jeff Jackson, by then Victorian secretary. According to a consultant's report she had engaged in ''bullying, intimidation and manipulative behaviour'', which could lead to WorkCover claims, and had even ''locked people in cupboards and little rooms''.

The allegations kept flying.

In 2009 Jeff Jackson was forced out, charged under union rules with misappropriation of members' money, gross misbehaviour and neglect of duty. The Age reported on April 2 that Jackson was accused of spending union money on prostitutes. Though he denied the allegation, he repaid the union $15,000. The settlement documents that detail Jackson's repayment schedule make no mention of prostitutes.

Jackson said he was the victim of ''a very dirty political campaign'', pointing the finger back at Fegan, who was found by an external auditor to have spent $147,000 of union money on promotional goods sold by a company owned by her partner, Phillip Grima. She denied the spending was improper.

Just six days after these revelations, the Herald broke the story that during his years as national secretary Thomson's HSU credit card had been used to withdraw $101,533, and to pay for prostitutes, restaurants, bars and other personal items.

On the day of an HSU national executive meeting in Sydney, nearly $2500 was charged against Thomson's credit card. Thomson denied all the allegations.

Whether it is true, many in Labor circles believe that the dossier on Thomson was leaked by Jeff's former wife, Kathy. Kathy Jackson is now national secretary of the HSU and controls four merged east coast branches along with Mike Williamson, the national president and a Thomson ally. It is understood to be a relationship of convenience.

Williamson is also a former national president of the ALP.

One theory has it that Kathy went public with the information in order to force mass resignations, paving the way for a return to office of her former husband. Ms Jackson did not return calls.

According to one senior HSU figure, the spending on Thomson's card would have been revealed as a matter of course, because over the years outgoing secretaries had left the union's finances in such a parlous state that the branches had insisted on audits being done at the end of each term.

Either way Kathy Jackson ordered an investigation of Thomson's spending and eventually referred the matter to the Workplace Ombudsman, now known as Fair Work Australia. She wasn't to know her actions would precipitate such a political maelstrom.

This week, under intense pressure, she handed the dossier to NSW police, casting herself as staunch defender of the interests of ordinary union members.

Thomson maintained his denials and launched a quickly aborted defamation action against the Herald. The move proved to be a disaster for Labor because it unearthed a ream of material that would otherwise have stayed buried; it breathed new life into the story.

Worse, he was unable to cover his legal bills. It has since been reported that the ALP's NSW head office assisted him because Thomson would have been bankrupted and automatically excluded from political office, bringing on a by-election Labor couldn't win.

The government's very existence was on the line. For reasons of Labor's political survival, Thomson couldn't resign and Gillard couldn't sack him.

The former Labor powerbroker, Graham Richardson, says it should never have gone so far. In February 2009, Richardson tells people, he made a few inquiries and told Thomson to drop the lawsuit immediately.

But there were more political bungles. Many in the party are furious that Thomson won preselection for Dobell despite the Herald's allegations. Other candidates, such as the former soldier David Mehan, wanted the seat.

Richardson and John Della Bosca - the former ALP strongman and state minister, and husband of Belinda Neal - are believed to have pushed for Thomson to go.

But the NSW Right stuck with their man, spending their political energy ensuring Belinda Neal - a controversial figure but one accused of little more than being herself - was ousted from the neighbouring seat of Robertson.

In the short term, it seemed they made the right call. As Labor seats tumbled around the country at last year's election, Thompson strengthened his hold on Dobell and Labor retained Robertson without Neal.

The Prime Minister wasn't to know it then, but Thomson's victory would bring with it a terrible political canker.

Four months after the election, the Herald published material its lawyers had uncovered during the defamation proceedings which directly challenged Thomson's claims about someone else using his credit card at brothels.

Thomson continued to tell people he was innocent and right up until April - when he dropped the defamation action - he was telling colleagues and ministers he had won the case against Fairfax Media.

''He looked me in the eye and told me he won,'' a minister said.

Publicly Thomson stood by his vague denials. Someone else could have used the card, he suggested, prompting the Herald to reveal that calls to brothels had been made from phones in hotel bedrooms hired in his name.

He mentioned that in Victoria another official had repaid thousands of dollars to the union after claims of spending money in brothels, an apparent bid to conflate allegations against him with those made against Jeff Jackson.

DIGGING by the Liberal frontbencher, Michael Ronaldson, largely kept the issue alive.

On June 15, in a little-noticed Senate speech, Ronaldson said an innocent Thomson would not have dropped the case. He demanded Gillard publicly refute the allegations against Thomson or ''immediately sack Mr Thomson''.

Acutely aware that Thomson's collapse would end the government, the story has been attacked by every media outlet that covers federal politics.

In the face of almost daily revelations about Thomson's alleged spending, the HSU bowed to pressure this week to refer the matter to police, prompting fury from some in Labor circles.

Early indications from within the fraud squad suggest he may never be charged with anything. Since the HSU apparently issued Thomson with a credit card but no instruction on its use, it's possible no crime has been committed.

So it here rests. To maintain government, Gillard must daily trash her credibility by mouthing empty support for her crippled MP. The Labor rank and file and members of affiliated unions have footed his legal bill. The HSU must co-operate with a police investigation that, if successful, will destroy the government. Craig Thomson can now serve the party he has damaged so badly only by fronting up to the humiliation daily.

The biggest losers are the men and women doing hard dirty work for low pay in hospitals and aged care facilities who seem to have paid for the whole ugly farce.

And for the Coalition, Thomson is the gift that keeps on giving.

© 2011 Fairfax Media

Obvious
by felix Friday, Aug 26 2011, 8:38am

Gillard has to go sooner or later, there is no argument in that regard; however, sooner is preferable as it reduces the overall negative impact on the Labor Party.

It should now be clear to every Labor empty-head that this woman is reviled by almost the entire Oz population -- a political first! Gillard couldn't sell a fish to a starving Eskimo, or have an original idea to save her life, she just drones monotonously on and on in parliament parroting the script that Washington wrote for her! Howard was at least less transparent in his grovelling to Bush but Gillard is as transparent as they come -- the people see through her every move.

Gillard simply cannot deliver, she is dead in the political water -- only Labor's infamous pack-rat mentality has saved her thus far but even the Labor Party must face reality soon.

I'll spell it out so every Labor imbecile is able to understand -- FOR THE SAKE OF THE PARTY GILLARD MUST GO! The perfect opportunity now presents itself with the Thomson affair; the rest is up to factional leaders to arrange a 'shuffle and tweak' to minimise any negative impact. Gillard cannot win -- however, the Party without her has a chance in two years.

The Melbourne Age has just published the latest INCRIMINATING Thomson scandal -- it's OVER!

"Defiant leader glued to her chair"
by easy Friday, Sep 2 2011, 1:45pm

The Melbourne Age, referring to the universally unpopular, witless Oz PM, ran a story with the above title -- can you believe it?

The solution is straight forward as good solutions always are -- simply throw Gillard AND her CHAIR clear out of Canberra for good!

But Gillard is adamant, "I'm not going anywhere," "I'm not moving" etc., perhaps someone should remind her that it is not her decision to make, she was placed in power by others and she will be removed by others.

Are you reading, this you inept, servile, treasonous bitch? The sooner you're gone the better for Oz AND your Party. If you had any sense of loyalty to your Party and decency you would voluntarily step down.


 
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