Seems some of our public servants spend their time sanitising their political masters’ Wikipedia entries.  The website, Wikiscanner, detects the IP address of computers making Wikipedia entries, and traced a number of edits to the Departments of Prime Minister and Cabinet, and Defence.  Some 126 edits on subjects ranging from the children overboard affair to the Treasurer, Peter Costello, were traced to PM&C IP addresses. Defence computers were found to have made more than 5000 edits to Wikipedia entries, including to articles on the “9/11 Truth Movement”, the Australian Defence Force Academy and even the Vietnam War-era Pentagon Papers.

Funny edits reported included:

• On June 28 an employee of PM&C modified Mr Costello’s entry to remove a reference to the nickname “Captain Smirk”.
• another employee last year modified an entry on a style of martial arts to add the sentence “Poo bum dicky wee wee”.

And not only are the federal public service at it, the NSW Premiers Department has staff sitting around editing the wiki entries about their leaders, defending Premier Morris Iemma, and former Premier Bob Carr.  And not only the government – Kevin Rudd admits his political staff do edit entries for factual corrections.  Rudd draws the distinction that political staffers is one thing, public servants another:

“My own personal staff, I’m sure, look through Wikipedia to make factual changes, no excuses about that, but using public service departments to make sure the truth is delivered according to Howard?”

“It is entirely legitimate for your personal political staff to make changes of a factual nature, but to engage public servants to go out there and re-edit history, it strikes me as odd to say the least,” Mr Rudd said.

I actually suspect this is not so much a case of a politically driven Ministry of Truth scenario with governments out to doctor the facts to suit their own world view, but more likely is a case of idle public servants with nothing better to do.  The Department of Defence’s actions in blocking employees’ access to Wikipedia suggests this … while the stated reason is that:

“It was found that [Wikipedia use] was exceeding our guidelines, particularly those that prevent personal comment from being confused as Defence comment,” a spokesperson said. “Consequently, Defence has blocked the general ability to edit Wikipedia from within its systems. This action is expected to be completed shortly.”

it sounds like there’s a bit of too many staff = not enough productive work to go around = bored public servants = entertaining themselves by playing on the internet (ie BAU for Defence).

However its not only Australian public servants and/or political staffers doing it. Others detected by Wikiscanner including the CIA, the Vatican, the Republican Party, the UN, the US Senate and the US Democratic Party’s Congressional Campaign Committee have all been sprung making self-serving wiki contributions.

Late news:  Head of PM&C, Dr Peter Shergold, denies staff in his department are editing wiki entries. He says investigations have revealed that the IP addresses traced back to the department were in fact not those of the department any more (since 2004) and were used by other customers of the departments internet service provider.

Federal Treasurer Peter Costello announced yesterday that the budget surplus for the 2006/7 financial year was $17.3 billion, $3.7 billion higher than what was forecast in the budget in May.  This leads to speculation that the 2007/8 budget will be in surplus by much more than the $10.6 billion forecast in the last budget, up to $3-4 billion more.  This of course leaves plenty of room for the Government to fund election promises.

The government has decided to put most of the additional surplus into a series of investment funds, eg

• the Future Fund – for paying off public service superannuation liabilities
• the Higher Education Endowment Fund
• a new Health and Medical Infrastructure Fund

and the Prime Minister has also flagged a Community infrastructure fund of up to $20 billion being established to fund community infrastructure like libraries and sporting facilities.  Mr Howard says the decision about which projects receive funding will be based on sensible national priorities.  If that is what actually happens, thats fine … but what I expect to happen is that “sensible national priorities” = “things that make us look good in the marginal seats prior to an election”.

I also find it strange that the government announcing a much bigger surplus than expected is accepted uncritically by the media as a good thing.  What about some other things it says:

• the fact that the Treasury underestimated the surplus by 26% only a month before the end of the financial year suggests the government does not have a particularly clear picture of its own finances  … try being a company CFO getting things that wrong – bet you BHP Billiton had a better forecast of its profit – incidentally $13.7 billion, prior to its announcement today.
• we are paying too much in taxes …the government has more money than it knows what to do with – and will inevitably waste plenty of it on pork barreling for the election, not to mention general inefficiency in the public sector (I’d rather they they give me my share back and I’ll decide how to invest it wisely or waste it on flashy consumption).
• the government is fudging at budget time, using conservative assumptions to understate what is most likely to happen … thus looking like heroes when the actual result for the surplus comes in way above the forecast.

Waiting to see someone put questions like that to Messrs Costello and Howard.

Big news story of the day today …Kevin Rudd visited a strip club while on a trip to New York in 2003. Big fucking deal!

However, according to Glenn Milne, this has rocked Rudd’s electoral hopes.  Milne certainly is well qualified to comment on shocking drunken behaviour.

Mr Rudd went to the club, which is a well-known haunt of UN diplomats and journalists, with New York Post editor Col Allan and Northern Territory Labor MP Warren Snowdon.   There is a certain irony in this story in that Allan is with News Limited, which is precisely the media outlet trying for all its worth to beat this story up.  According to Allan:

“Yes, we went out for a drink,” Mr Allan said.

“Yes, it was at a gentleman’s club and he (Mr Rudd) behaved like a perfect gentleman.”

Milne says he got the story from “Canberra based sources” … very close to the government I’d say (and I think I heard on the radio this afternoon, Alexander Downer’s name mentioned in dispatches).

Apart from the shock! horror!, Rudd gets pissed and touches up strippers, angle, the other shock! horror! side of this story is that Rudd did this while on a trip at taxpayers’ expense – it cost $18,000.   Well last time I heard, you’re not actually on the company’s time 24/7 when on a business trip.  In fact, getting pissed and making a goose of yourself on an overseas business trip would be par for the course for many of us.

Rudd must have been pissed indeed.  He said neither he nor Mr Snowdon had a “completely clear recollection” of whether there were semi-naked women in the club or what they were doing.    Anyway, whatever it is he didn’t do there, he has apologised for:

“But that doesn’t absolve me for going in that door in the first place. That’s where I made the error of judgment and it’s something I shouldn’t have done.”

“It’s an embarrassing thing to happen. I think no-one would welcome it. I accept that.

“But I think at the end of the day people just want you to level with them and when you’ve made a mistake, be up-front about it.”

“I own responsibility for my own actions here. I’m the bloke who took the decision to go out to this place … and that’s a foolish mistake on my part.”

Should be the end of the story.  Kevin Rudd got pissed and acted dumb … big deal!  He isn’t the first aspiring leader to do this and won’t be the last.  It detracts from his ability to lead his party and potentially the country in what ways???

Another question, since when has the role of journalists been to be cheerleaders for one side of politics or the other?  Glenn Milne and Piers Ackerman in the News press should be on the payroll of the government media unit for all the objectivity they display.  Likewise there are journos who seem to see themselves as branches of the ALP.  They are as bad as each other.