To President of ACTU, Australia

 

 

 

Posted: December 5, 2003

Author: Barry Pittard

Email: bpittard@beachaccess.com.au

 

From: Barry Pittard, Australia
 
To: Sharan Burrow, President, Australian Council of Trade Unions.

 

Email Sent: Friday, December 05, 2003 12:51 PM
Subject: Laurie Ferguson needs to be onside here

 

Thanks, Sharan,
 
I give you my absolute assurance that the countless allegations from around the world against Sathya Sai Baba, and against his apex leadership for a vast cover up and damage control operations are true.
 
I request - of course - that you kindly come up with a way in which we can work together to ensure that the Trade Unions and ALP can ensure that they stay clear of this organisation, which has a clear but unpublicised agenda for insinating itself, co-opting, etc., in regard of community leaders and institutions.
 
I don't mean to try to go for Laurie's jugular but I'm not going to suffer him or anyone else to ignore the far better quality of knowledge as to the facts than his Hindu and other informants in Sydney.
 
It's about our old friend - accountability ...
 
Therefore, would you let me know when you have got some resolution in the matter?
 
Barry
 
 
----- Original Message -----
From: Sharan Burrow
To: Barry Pittard
Sent: Friday, December 05, 2003 12:51 PM
Subject: RE: Laurie Ferguson needs to be onside here

 

Will do what we can - good luck

 

-----------------

 

Cc:'d in the following letter were:

 

Dr Carmen Lawrence MP, President of the Australian Labor Party.

 

Mark Latham MP, Leader of the Federal ALP Opposition Party.

 

Laurie Ferguson who is referred to is the Shadow Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs

 

Thursday, 4 December 2003 7:30 PM

 

Subject: Laurie Ferguson needs to be onside here

 

Dear Sharan and Greg, (ed, Greg Combet, Secretary, ACTU)
 
I'm now retired. As a teacher, I was a member of the VSTU, always going out on the limb for Union causes and now I feel like a bit of support myself. I want you to support me in ensuring that not a single member of the ALP actively supports the shameful Indian guru Guru Sathya Sai Baba's mission. Laurie Ferguson is, without the slightest shadow of a doubt misinformed about his status, and I am ready to swing in some UK labor top guns, and persons of great eminence, who will support my points to you and Carmen Lawrence.
 
The note below is to Mark Latham,
 
Incidentally, next year, X (ed., name of a world respected television broadcaster was confided), after accepting my recommendations to make the purchase, will air a searing fifty-four minute documentary by Denmark's national broadcaster on the many worldwide allegations of male sexual molestation and other criminal accusations against Sathya Sai Baba.
 
Barry Pittard.
 
Dear Mark,
 
Congratulations and all that... (ed, Mark Latham MP had just been voted leader of the parliamentary party).

 

Meanwhile, along with approaches I shall be making to the Federal ALP executive, this is to request that you ensure that no other ALP Members act as naively as Laurie Ferguson has in this matter. Even as he wrote to me, I was engaged in discussions with a (ed, details were confided relating to a young cleric in training in a major denomination) who, from a victim's point of view, gives yet one more of hundreds of credible and shocking accounts of sexual molestation by Sathya Sai Baba, India's most famous guru, which makes Laurie's recalcitrance in this matter yet more culpable. The young cleric tells me that his (I might mention very powerful section of the church) will support him to the hilt when we go public with the accusations, which is what I would have hoped for from Laurie Ferguson and certainly what I ask from the ACTU and the ALP as a whole.

 

Barry Pittard. Sunshine Coast: 07 5442 9261.