A woman of the streets

ONCE, she was the queen of all their hearts, the irrestible object of Trades Hall desire.

A new front fence? She had only to mention it in passing for Bill the Greek to lay his bricks and woggy efforts by her front door.

A new bathroom? No sooner was the old one's disrepair offered as an excuse for inadequate personal hygiene than a volunteer work crew was on hand to gut the old one, not even bothering to ask for permission.

A little cash shortfall? Not to worry. Bruvver Bruce would send a lackey to the bank with a $5000 cash deposit.

Ah, life was good back then ... but not these days.

These Things Can Be Checked, Phillip

IN THE Silly this morning, quality journalist Phillip Coorey writes of our Prime Minister's indomitable spirit and strength of character. That was to be expected, of course. He is, after all, working for Fairfax, where history is as those who record its first draft wish it to be, and nobody on staff knows anyone who votes Liberal, doubts global warming or doesn't appreciate the insistent pressure of a bicycle seat on the back passage.

What comes as somewhat more of a surprise is Coorey's inability to read and comprehend a simple paragraph, which is the charitable interpretation of what he has committed to paper this morning. The less sanguine view would be that Coorey is a shill who places misquotation at the service of his political sympathies.

Let readers decide. Here is Coorey today (with added emphasis):

Senator Brandis argued that because Ms Gillard knew all along the association was to help finance the re-election of union officials Bruce Wilson, who was then Ms Gillard's boyfriend, and his sidekick, Ralph Blewitt, on a platform of workplace safety, she had deliberately misled. He claimed authorities would not have incorporated the association had this been mentioned.

''The document she represented to be true was false,'' he said.

But only two days before, in a speech to the Senate, Senator Brandis said it could be argued that the objects of the association could be interpreted as supporting the election of union officials. ''There might be room for argument about the vagueness of the objects,'' he said.

Well, here is what Brandis actually told the Senate:

Furthermore, the certification provision, section 5 of the Western Australian Associations Incorporation Act, also requires the applicant to verify that the Association has more than five members. Ms Gillard did so. However, the Association, as Ms Gillard well knew, only had two members—Wilson and Blewitt. While there might be room for argument about the vagueness of the objects, there is no vagary about this: Ms Gillard falsely certified the Association to be compliant in respect of its number of members. She knew it was not and, once again, appears to have breached section 170 of the Western Australian Criminal Code.

Notice how Coorey has taken the fragment of a much larger thought, re-punctuated it to form a stand-alone sentence and then deep-sixed everything else.

Is it any wonder Coorey finds so much to admire in Gillard? Neither is capable of telling the truth.

UPDATE: As the Walkley Awards were presented last night, it is timely to consider Article I of your professional journalist's Code of Ethics:

1.  Report and interpret honestly, striving for accuracy, fairness and disclosure of all essential facts.  Do not suppress relevant available facts, or give distorting emphasis.  Do your utmost  to give a fair opportunity for reply.

Anyone inclined to file a complaint about Coorey's liberties with the record (and punctuation)  might want to quote that.

MEA CULPA: Due to an outbreak on mental infirmity this item went up with the author of the Silly piece mis-identified. It would be nice to think the Silly had the wrong byline on the column and subsequently changed it, as happened the other day with a Mark Baker article, but there is no proof of that. The appropriate proper nouns have now been changed.

Thanks to Deadman for noting the error.

That's His Girl!

OUR Prime Minister's father would have been so very proud.

UPDATE: It is a rare thing for the obligation to play golf to be resented, but that is the case today. The friends waiting at the first tee won't be half as much as fun as watching Gillard's unpaid apologists ignore the story, spin the story, bury the story.

Barrie Cassidy, who should be working at the BBC, will have his spade out shortly.

Laurie Oakes will be sitting on the story, with no hope of a peep escaping the rolling smother of those saddle-bagged buttocks.

Michelle Grattan will set aside the ear trumpet and profess not to have heard a thing.

Phil Coorey is even now penning a column asserting that revelations of graft are good for the PM's poll standing and that it is Tony Abbott who has the real headache.

Peter McEvoy is calling Malcolm Turnbull, telling him he is too much of a gentleman to ever raise such a sordid subject and would he like to play the Opposition Leader Australia Really Wants on next week's Q&A?

And Anne Summers? Well, after telling Young Chip to fetch her a double dose of Ford Pills, she will set to work on her next speech to Emily's Listers, hailing the Lady in the Lodge for aborting Bruce Wilson's child and further suggest all women who undergo terminations should get $5000 payments. After all, that's what the breeders get, so it would be only fair.

For younger readers:

UPDATE II: If you doubt the prophesies above, refrain from betting against them. Nothing can be too low, filthy, shameless and corrupt to stay the luvvie elite from springing to its immediate defence. Absolutely nothing.

UPDATE III: At Catallaxy, another prophecy, this one from commenter The Beer Whisperer, "When do we get Underbelly: Red-headed Trollop?"

UPDATE IV: Oakes lives up to expectations. He is on Neil Mitchell's 3AW radio show this very minute. A sample: "The Australian has devoted a page and a half to this with no allegation of wrongdoing ... Her boyfriend had a big night at the casino, well that's credible."

The Bowl of Drpping concludes with an observation that the Lynch a Catholic Royal Commission holds no obvious peril for Tony Abbott (Oakes will need another 30 minutes or so to manufacture one) and then a gush of adoring mush in praise of Gough Whitlam.

UPDATE V: Already late for the golf date, but one thing about the timing the $5000 payment seems smelly and odd. If that cash was deposited in "mid 1995", as The Australian today asserts, what of this coda to the transcript of the S&G exit interview with Peter Gordon (emphasis added at the Billabong):

PG: Julia, you told us you commenced a personal relationship with Bruce Wilson in late 1991. Can you tell us the current status of that personal relationship?

JG: Bruce is currently in Western Australia and we aren't in contact and I don't expect to be in contact with him again unless I needed to for some particular purpose related to the issues that we've discussed, and that means in, well, that obviously means that any relationship between us is at an end.

Along with a lot of other things about the relationship, Gillard needs to explain the chronology of the romance's rupture  If she had broken up with Wilson, why was he slipping cash into her bank account? If she had not broken up with Wilson and remained in contact, why did she lie to Gordon?

Silly question. Gillard lies about everything.

Crooked, with a Calypso Beat

THIS IS brilliant:

Thanks to Cat commenter Jules for turning it up.

Bunyip Agonistes

FOR REASONS perhaps best explained by sleep researchers or shrinks, slumber’s lifting veil this morning stopped half way up to strand a drowsy Bunyip in that delightful realm of semi-conscious reveries and random, silly thoughts. The fetching Maureen from the golf club sometimes figures at these moments, but alas, not today. Rather than a keen instructor’s pleasure at guiding the recent divorcee’s legs to a practical spread and polishing her grip for the sweeter shot, it was the far less appealing phantasm of our Prime Minister that bounced about the pillow to the unlikely accompaniment of the poet John Milton – very strange combination indeed.

The author of Paradise Lost had a problem with women, as every primary schooler knows, and poured much of his angst at a short,embarrassing and unhappy first marriage into Samson Agonistes. Could that be at the root of a subconscious connection, the link between a man scarred upon the marital couch and the modern woman who has thrashed about on the beds of so many others?

Then, over coffee and a crumpet, a double revelation!

It was Milton who railed in Areopagitica against censorship, an obvious link to the shrew who would, and probably will, impose further limits and restrictions on free speech. And there was more when memory dredged up a snatch of Agonistes -- a lovely bit wherein Milton taps the nautical to introduce Delilah, who sails into his hero’s heart beribboned and full-breasted as a square rig before the wind.

But who is this, what thing of sea or land,--
Female of sex it seems,--
That so bedeck'd, ornate, and gay,
Comes this way sailing
Like a stately ship
Of Tarsus, bound for th' isles
Of Javan or Gadire,
With all her bravery on, and tackle trim,
Sails fill'd, and streamers waving,
Courted by all the winds that hold them play,
An amber scent of odorous perfume
Her harbinger?

Readers are asked to forgive the indulgence of this post. It was a strange dream and demanded at least some attempt at an explanation.

Braver than a Frenchman

WHEN Voltaire was dying he is famously said to have rejected a priest's invitation to renounce Satan on the quite reasonable grounds that, given his circumstances, he did not need additional enemies. At the corner of Collins and Spencer streets, where Fairfax Media's Melbourne outpost's pallor remains no less an indicator of terminal health than a French writer's soiled sheets, Mark Baker is making his employer's peace with truth. Through a succession of its recent editors The Age has found it expedient to look the other way when stories that jarred its sympathies arose. Now, in almost the hour of its death, Baker is redeeming Fairfax with journalism of the sort that, had it been pursued earlier and in many other areas, might have done much to preserve the southern franchise's reputation and, perhaps, even its bottom line.

What makes this renunciation of past form so brave is that, as The Age reports and advances what the blogosphere has been covering for years, there are many quiet mutterings in Canberra that Age-style journalism needs to be supported by the public purse. Pointing out that our PM is a liar, a crook's mole moll and the happy beneficiary of a vital file's inexplicable disappearance is unlikely to impress the corruptocrats who now hold the purse strings.

As Baker has now peered into Gillard's wormy can, let us hope Fairfax survives long enough to see these further leads pursued:

1/ The S&G files on the Kerr Street property  and other AWU-related matters were transferred to Maurice Blackburn, where Nicola Roxon took charge of them, when the union yanked its business in disgust from Gillard's old firm.

Does Roxon have the missing files? Does Blackburn's have them? What light can be shed by Bill Shorten, also at Blackburn's and Roxon's then-lover, on the scandal at the AWU, where he went on to become the hero of the Beaconsfield Mine drama.

2/ Are the property-transfer records for 36 St Philip Street, Abbotsford, up to snuff? This was Gillard's address and is now owned by her former housemate. Was any attempt made to avoid stamp duty when the property was transferred to its current owner?

3/ Was Kerr Street purchased in Ralph Blewitt's name in order to hide property from Wilson's soon-to-be ex wife, who might have claimed it in a division of property. She should be relatively easy to find and her views might make for interesting reading.

5/ Was Town Mode, recipient of $17,500 in "slush fund" cheques, owned by a union associate of Bruce Wilson, whose mates allegedly kept doing unauthorised renovations to Gillard's digs.

And there is a final scandal, one which may represent the greatest and most damning example of cynical Gillardian ambition:

4/ How did Gillard come to barrack for the Western Bulldogs?

Consider, a Welsh girl raised in Adelaide moves as a 21-year-old to Melbourne, where her passion is endorsing Socialist Forum motions denouncing marriage as no better than prostitution and scheming with former CPA members, who represented almost half of Socialist Forum's members, to bring on the revolution.

Then she starts at Slater & Gordon, where Peter Gordon is a Bulldog supporter, as are numerous other of the firm's execs, including her supervisor there, Brendan Murphy, recently elevated by his former protege. Suddenly, Gillard becomes a Bulldog supporter.

Oh, and one other peculiarity of timing: Peter Gordon left his law firm not long after Gillard was shown the door. So did Murphy (to Blackburn's). Shortly after that, Gordon's marriage came publicly to pieces. Make of that what you will.

Meanwhile, Gillard remains the Bulldogs' Number 1 ticketholder. The Dogs had a terrible year. A fresh start to the 2013 season would be to revoke the Prime Minister's membership and send her to St Kilda, where it is well known that criminals are valued and appreciated.

Fast and Loose

A LITTLE over two years ago, freshly installed in the Prime Minister’s office and with Kevin Rudd’s blood still damp on the carpet, Julia Gillard made no bones about plying her admirers in the press corps with cheat sheets of quotes to be used against her opposite number:

Meanwhile, Ms Gillard has not denied reports that Labor has been giving journalists lists of past quotes made by Mr Abbott on various subjects.

"They're quotes of Mr Abbott, they're things that he's said," she said.

"Australians are entitled to know Mr Abbott's words.

"We make his words available. If he's embarrassed by them that's too bad. He said them.”

Gillard had an eager go-fer in this effort, her ally, intimate and chief dirt-distributor Craig Emerson, whose own words from his maiden speech would seem every bit as worth recalling – especially this week, when the general wretchedness of men and female saintliness remain very much in the news:

I thank our children—Ben, Tom and Laura—for the joy they are bringing to us. And I want to express my love for my wife, Cathy, who has nurtured our family, stood resolutely in support of my aspirations at great personal sacrifice and who deserves to achieve her own goals and fulfilment with my total support.

The speech was delivered in 1998, with the Emersons looking on proudly from the gallery.
One wonders if they stayed for the maiden speech by a colleague, also newly elected, of their devoted husband and father.

Divorce, Kerr Street-Style

MICHAEL SMITH has a new swag of documents relating to Julia Gillard, Bruce Wilson, the purchase of 1/85 Kerr Street, Fitzroy, and the beard Ralph Blewitt. They make for interesting reading and further the impression that the nation's leader is either very dim or very bent. With Mark Baker's latest article on the matter published today in The Age -- yes, The Age, so you know this is getting serious -- we can all assume the Prime Minister will need to summon a few sympathetic, ill-informed hacks and clarify her former youth and naivety all over again. That performance will be very interesting, no doubt, but not entirely so satisfying as might be if one of the quality journalists neglects to put the following question.

"Prime Minister, at the time you were handed Ralph Blewitt's pre-signed power of attorney, your lover Wilson was a married man with children and in the process of leaving his family in order to take up residence in Melbourne, where for several years he shared his life with you. Would it be fair to say that one obvious advantage of listing Blewitt as Kerr Street's buyer of record was that it shielded Wilson's wealth from his soon-to-be ex-wife and her divorce lawyers?"

Given Gillard's high-decibel assault this week on the patriarchy and her stridency in demanding that women be given a fair shake, a follow-up question would be in order:

"Does your sympathy for women extend to humble housewives cheated of their marital assets by the legal deceptions of philandering husbands' and their new girlfriends?"

Many of the hackettes are giving Gillard rave reviews for her Question Time harangue. Come the election (and may it come soon!), it will be interesting to see if that enthusiasm is shared by the wider female electorate, especially those who have been robbed blind by ex-husbands.
 , 

Slipper and the Shrew

HERE'S a riddle:

Q: What's the difference between Julia Gillard and Peter Slipper?

A: Slipper had the decency to resign

and here's another:

Q: What does a strong woman sound like?

A: A shrieking fishwife.

and a final one

Q: If Gillard were to resign (ha-ha), could Labor find a similar, but somewhat more presentable substitute?

A: Yes.

Lie-a-thon Looming

THIS ADVISORY will be of greater interest to younger readers who are, as they say, "down with Twitter", but it is worth everyone's while to note that Julia Gillard will shortly be taking questions from readers of the Launceston Examiner.

The session begins at 12:45, and you can catch PM Yabby's latest lies  by clicking here:

Some possible questions:

Did either Bruce Wilson's kids or Craig Emerson's kids ever call you "mum"?

Did Nicola Roxon and Bill Shorten ever suggest to yourself and Bruce that it would be lots of fun to throw everyone's car keys into a hat?

Now that your staffers have instigated that race riot on Australia Day, are you prepared to stir up other minorities against Abbott in the interests of a diverse, multicultural community rooted in the principle of equal opportunity for all?

Is Peter Slipper's allowance as Speaker enough? Shouldn't he get an extra book of taxi vouchers so he can make it to court?

Did you pay stamp duty when you transferred your former Abbotsford home to the uni girlfriend you shared it with? Are there any other lawyerly stratagems little people might use to avoid taxes?

Was Vassilis Telikostoglou, who built your front fence, the owner of Paris Mode fashions, which is listed as having received $17,500 from one of Bruce's fraudulently registerred bank accounts?

Remember, the Examiner is a Fairfax newspaper and therefore a bastion of that quality journalism. The editors would never dream -- not in a million years -- of sifting questions to present only the softballs.

But just to make sure everyone gets to see those inquiries, answered or not, why not tweet them as well to the Examiner's twitter account? Here it is:

@ExaminerOnline (use the hash tag #SunX)

 Readers are invited to contribute their own questions in comments.

UPDATE: Forget even trying. The questions below, all posted in less than 10 minutes of the "chat", demonstrate rather clearly that, no matter what the medium, Fairfax journalists will always be happy to serve as this government's gatekeepers and publicists.

Comment From Walter 

As a 70 year old aged pensioner I could not be more happier with you as Australias PM. Keep up the good work 

Comment From EL 

Hi Prime Minister, Just wanted to also thank you and am proud to vote Labour under your leadership 

Comment From Kev 

Lots of reforms by your Govt is long term- carbon pricing, edu, nbn, etc. looking to the future, I'm glad we have you leading the nation! 

Comment From Gregg 

Just would like to say you are doing a good job and sorry to hear about your dad my thoughts are with you 

Comment From Andrea obrien 

Don't have question. Just wanted to thank you. From a mother of Daughters. Stay strong. 

Comment From Aaron D

As a passionate advocate of your government's agenda can I say thank you for not giving in to the barrage of negativity and for having the tenacity to fight this fight. I am sure it will be rewarded in the long term. 

Comment From Emily Rodrigo 

Prime minister, I'd just like to say how great it is having a female prime minister. 

Comment From Pip 

I like your glasses PM! 

Comment From maureen 

Sincere thanks for your commitment to our country, Ms Gillard. I hope you get a chance in your busy schedule to explore the beautiful state of Tassie. 

Comment From Annie 

Thank you for chatting, you are an inspiration.

Just coincidentally, at exactly the same moment Fairfax's Tasmanian journalists were protecting their guest from the sort of questions good stenographers would never ask, the publisher's stock hit an all-time low of 39.5 cents.

The Great Bunyip is a dab hand at punishing sins.

The Liar's Love Nest

HOSPITAL duty and geriatric taxi services mean no more posts until Sunday night, but until then contemplate this lovely home at 85 Kerr Street, Fitzroy, where "a young and naive lawyer" wiggled and wobbled  in her scanties with love god and shakedown artist Bruce Wilson.

 
Andrew Bolt, the bravest man at News Ltd., refuses to drop the subject of our PM and her light-fingered  former swain. He has some fascinating documents on  his Herald Sun site, where the evidence mounts that News Limited is going down the Fairfax road. First, the company's papers were banned from examining our PM's dark background. Now readers cannot comment on the evidence Andrew is providing.

And on the subject of hospitals, many thanks to the several readers who offered to buy Father Bunyip a wheelchair. The generosity is appreciated, but money isn't the issue. Rather, it has been the Pater's refusal to admit he is getting older and now needs one. The hobbles down hospital corridors over the past week or so appear to have finally persuaded him.

Back Sunday night or Monday morning.