CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australia’s leader denied she personally benefited from helping a boyfriend set up a union fund 17 years ago, comprehensively addressing the scandal Thursday for the first time in a likely acknowledgement that silence could harm her party’s election chances next year.

The accusations have dogged Prime Minister Julia Gillard for years but her news conference came after The Australian newspaper, owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Ltd., apologized on its website for reporting in Thursday’s print edition that Gillard had set up the trust fund in 1995 for Bruce Wilson, a top official with the Australian Workers Union.

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