Every bit as Orwellian as it sounds – set up by the Hawke Government, back in the day… Of course, the Coalition said they’d shut it down, and did… they just then opened it under a different name,with even less potential oversight. And so it goes on…
“Greg Barns in his book Selling the Australian Government: Politics and Propaganda From Whitlam to Howard (an interesting review of which you will find on the APRA website here) used the insight gained from years working as a Liberal Party staffer to blow the whistle on the Coalition’s Government Members Secretariat (GMS) operating from the office of the Government Whip and thus protected from parliamentary scrutiny. This was the group that Mark Latham referred to as “the dirt unit” which set out to find information with which he could be discredited.”
Anon. 2007. The return of the dirt aNiMaLS. Crikey, 22 June.
marchudson.net 