Julia Gillard’s office has set up a unit to go looking for dirt and slime on opposition politicians. This raises a few questions, about a million questions in fact. This has been openly admitted by Prime Minister Gillard which says a lot about her state of mind given that it would not have been set up without her authority.
I always knew that Julia Gillard was big fan of the former US President Richard Nixon, hence the title of a previous post “Julia Gillard’s Richard Nixon moment.” but with the new dirt unit she is obviously a lot bigger fan than I thought. (Click here to read the post and watch the video)
Does Julia Gillard think that the Australian voters are happy for her to spend tax payers money and time for her and her colleagues to go looking for dirt on opposition MPs and Senators? I thought governments where there to govern but apparently this is not the case.
The story first broke on the ABC:
“The Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, is playing down claims that a dirt unit is operating in her office.
Alexandra Kirk broke the story this morning on AM.
Labor sources told her the PM’s director of strategy, Nick Reece, has coached ministerial staff on how to find background information on Coalition frontbenchers.
A document calls on staffers to find details on their opponents’ “younger days”, articles in student newspapers, and any fundraising, companies or legal cases that they’d been involved in.
The Prime Minister says it’s reasonable to scrutinise Opposition frontbenchers.”
and goes on to say:
Labor sources say Mr Reece’s 11 point “to do” list on gathering information on Coalition frontbenchers, starts with point one: “ready to go”.
It includes their “younger days”, pecuniary interests, fundraising, study trips, social networking and personal websites, and quote “potential issues, such as litigation”.
Regular readers well and truly know about Julia Gillard’s “younger days” and her involvement in the AWU $1 million fraud. I wonder if that will get a mention when they report back to Gillard. (Click here to read the post)
Julia Gillard wrote an opinion piece for The Age in 2007 titled “Who you going to call? Dirt-busters” about this very topic where she says:
“But whether the Australian people are interested or not, dirt-digging is now huge business in federal politics. The Howard Government just loves using taxpayers’ dollars to finance its re-election.”
and
“Everyone in politics plays the game hard. And so we should. There is too much at stake at each election about the future of the nation to pull our punches. And as a politician I expect scrutiny. But should the public be footing the bill?” (Click here to read the full article)
No they should not Ms Gillard! Make the Labor Party refund our money.
Politicians looking for dirt on their competitors is nothing new, what is so galling is that it is being openly run and promoted by the Prime Minister. Julie Gillard’s office has form on the board for this type of thing if you remember the Australia Day riots as it became known where one of her staff members tried to incite a riot by Aborigines against opposition leader Tony Abbott. Gillard’s staff member resigned. Gillard claimed she did not know before hand but she was certainly involved in the cover-up.
But given she has set up the dirt unit in her office, which shows her character and how she operates, her statement that she did not have prior knowledge of the Australian Day riots looks like a straight out lie and even more so given that we know she was involved in the cover-up.
Richard Nixon who had similar operations when he was President of the US ultimately had to resign as he was facing near certain impeachment for his part in the cover-up.
This what it says on Wikipedia:
“The Watergate scandal was a political scandal that occurred in the United States in the 1970s as a result of the June 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., and the Nixon administration’s attempted cover-up of its involvement. The scandal eventually led to the resignation of Richard Nixon, the President of the United States, on August 9, 1974, the only resignation of a U.S. President. The scandal also resulted in the indictment, trial, conviction and incarceration of 43 people, including dozens of top Nixon administration officials.” (Click here to read more about Richard Nixon and Watergate on Wikipedia)
If Julia Gillard had not covered up the Australia Day riots who knows what would have come to light. It must be noted that her staff were involved in criminal offences such as trying to incite a riot. The post I wrote on the scandal is titled “Julia Gillard’s office lines up the Aborigines against Tony Abbott but it backfires badly.” (Click here to read the post)
In the last couple of weeks the government has been pressuring the media and opposition to back off from the federal politician Craig Thomson who the whole country knows is guilty of fraud and theft. Yet Ms Gillard and crew think it is fine to go digging for dirt on others. What are they going to do with the dirt they find? Give it to the same media they do not want to write about Craig Thomson?
And what about Julia Gillard closing down the media on her corrupt past which started here last year with my post “Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s criminal history and her hypocrisy with WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.” (Click here to read the post)
Other media started running with the story and Julia Gillard jumped on the phone to media executives at News Ltd, Fairfax Media and highly likely others and had the reporting closed down. Not for legal reasons but for political reasons. I also did a post on that titled “The day the Australian media died.” (Click here to read the post)
If and when Julia Gillard and Labor politicians approach the media with dirt they have on opposition politicians will the reporters also ask questions about Julia Gillard’s past involvement with the AWU fraud and theft?
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