The WA Department of Commerce has declared the hunt is over for correspondence relating to the establishment of Australian Workers Union (AWU) Workplace Reform Association in 1992.

There has been keen media interest in the possibility that such correspondence may still exist in the department’s archives, after Slater & Gordon CEO Andrew Grech told the Age newspaper that a file relating to relating to the union “slush fund” established by the Prime Minister when working for law firm Slater & Gordon 20 years ago could not be found.

Commissioner for Consumer Protection, Anne Driscoll said in a statement to Image & Data Manager: “Consumer Protection, a division of the Department of Commerce in WA, has conducted an exhaustive search of the available records relating to the creation of the Australian Workers Union Workplace Reform Association in 1992. Microfiche copies of the original application, the Association’s constitution and some internal documents were found but copies of any correspondence were not located.”

The application and constitution are publicly available documents, but internal documents would only be available subject to Freedom of Information applications.

“A total of 710 boxes of association records were handed over from the former Corporate Affairs Commission around 1992 and are stored securely off-site. While some files dated prior to 1987 were destroyed, all files dated from 1987 that were received from the former Commission have been retained,” said Driscoll.

“Consumer Protection is confident that the extensive search so far of physical files, microfiche and any digital records relating to this Association by officers of the Associations Branch would have uncovered all the available documents that currently exist.”

IDM inquired as to whether correspondence in the archives was stored as paper files only or scanned to a format to enable keyword searching, but a response has not been received.