text: Political parties increasingly are using public money to pay staff to run smear campaigns against opponents. Royce Millar reports.
  LIKE most governments, John Brumby's does not advertise the fact that it engages in smear tactics. But it does, and with gusto. Out of the Premier's own office, the government runs a well-resourced investigative operation targeting political foes, including Coalition and Greens MPs and candidates.
  In government circles the group that oversees this work is known, only half-jokingly, as the "dirt unit".
  Once a job for the party faithful or individual MPs, dirt-digging is increasingly the responsibility of a group of government employees described by Griffith University public policy specialist Anne Tiernan as operating "in the shadows of Australian politics". They are what have effectively become a growing private army of ministerial staff.
  The most recent airing of the dirt unit's work occurred in August when state Finance Minister Tim Holding made allegations about Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu and supposed links to a company based in an overseas tax haven.
  Also, opposition frontbenchers, including health spokesman David Davis and housing shadow Wendy Lovell,
  were accused (wrongly) of failing to declare shareholdings on the Parliament's Register of Members' Interests.
  The timing may not have been ideal, the allegations coming as they did at the height of public frustration over a federal election campaign universally condemned for its lack of substance and genuine debate.
  Nonetheless, political hardheads stress that well-placed and well-timed dirt can be a vote changer, and could be decisive in the forthcoming election, which is likely to be the closest since 1999.
  So, although some among the ranks of the major party are squeamish about their team's tactics, dishing the dirt is alive and thriving in Victorian politics.
  Much of the work by government dirt diggers is yet to see the light of day, and will surface in the run-up to the election.
  What exactly constitutes "dirt" is debatable; there is no official rule book. Politicians and commentators allude to an Australian convention that private lives are out of bounds and notable political figures subscribe, at least publicly, to that view.
  In 2007, the then deputy Labor leader, Julia Gillard, herself renowned as a parliamentary gunslinger, drew a line on dirt. The Howard government had offered an Age journalist a rehashed story about a relationship Gillard had had with a union official years before. She slammed the Coalition for running a dirt unit and engaging in unacceptable "smear".
  The man behind some of the more controversial Howard government muckraking was Ian Hanke, a former adviser to ministers Peter Reith and Kevin Andrews.
  Hanke confirms his job involved developing "dossiers"on opposition MPs, with former leader Mark Latham a favoured subject at the time.
  He acknowledges, in particular, comprehensive research into Latham's rocky record as a Liverpool councillor, but denies being behind rumours painting Latham as a violent, adulterous sexual harasser. "I knew him inside out and back to front. It would be a dereliction not to know everything there is to know about your opponents."
  Though his critics will scoff, Hanke insists he did not "snoop", and that he limited his research to matters of public interest.
  Victorian Green MP Greg Barber says scrutiny of one's political opponents falls into three clear categories: the personal, issues around the misuse of public office, and questions of policy.
  No shrinking violet in the political cut and thrust, Barber also says personal lives should be out of bounds. He cites as unacceptable Labor's public mocking of a Victorian Greens candidate, Janet Rice, who has a trans-gender partner, and the publication of an internet story by Labor-linked blogger Andrew Landeryou depicting a teenage Barber as an unhinged paramilitary. Landeryou's Vexnews is an outlet for smear although not only for Labor.
  Gillard, Hanke and Barber seem to agree that any investigation of opponents should draw a line between public and private lives. In political reality, however, and especially for the backroom dirt-diggers, that line tends to be thin and malleable.
  John Howard's view of such matters was instructive. In 2004, Labor opposition leader Mark Latham held an emotional press conference to call for an end to a smear campaign that was upsetting his family, including rumours about a bucks party video.
  Prime minister Howard agreed, but added the rider that a truce would hold unless it could be shown there was a connection between Latham's private life and the performance of public duty.
  It is a rider often cited by political and media muckrakers. Public interest is a handy cover for getting down and dirty.
  For example, Victorian Labor is currently deciding how to exploit rumours about a senior opposition MP having an affair with someone in an industry body related to the MP's area of policy interest. Do not be surprised to see such an allegation surface publicly — via Labor's dirt unit — before November 27.
  The Age has questioned several Labor figures known over the years for their gloves-off tactics. Their response to questions about what is on and off limits ranges from private lives are no-go, to the reluctant admission that there are no limits.
  "Yes, it's the grubbier side of politics, but it's about power," says one of Labor's seasoned tough nuts. "I'd like to tell you that there is a line, but there probably isn't. Everyone's fair game."
  Smear is not new, of course. It has been a part of political rough and tumble since day one. Yet well-positioned players from both major parties have complained about politics getting nastier in recent years.
  In 2007, when Kevin Rudd was opposition leader, his medical records were leaked revealing a dodgy heart valve — a perfect hook on which to hang quips and questions about the strength of an aspiring PM's ticker.
  Rudd blamed his opponents and bemoaned the "increasingly Americanised" reliance on personal muckraking in Australian politics.
  Alister Drysdale, a former adviser to Malcolm Fraser and Jeff Kennett, agrees with Rudd's concern about American-style politics, claiming the media's emphasis on individuals over policy has encouraged the trend.
  If Rudd and Drysdale are right, then the greater taxpayer-funded resources available to those who engage in dirt digging may be a factor.
  Indeed, the expression "dirt unit" is a 21st century addition to the political lexicon. A survey of major Australian newspapers since 1990 shows it was first used in 2004, and raised against the Howard government.
  While this may simply reflect a change in journalistic language, it does coincide with the explosion of private staff members in ministerial offices. In the mid-1960s, Robert Menzies ran Australia with a personal staff of four. By late 1975, federal ministers were supported by 227 ministerial staff. By mid-2006, that figure had doubled to more than 450.
  Staffers have assorted policy and strategy roles supporting their ministers. But this poorly regulated sector of government is also an invaluable resource for doling out political patronage, for election campaigning, and for dirt digging.
  Tiernan likens ministerial staff to royal "courtiers" and says this whole new layer of government was "grafted" on to the traditional minister-public service system without proper planning or accountability. Court politics, she has written, "is an awkward fit with democratic ideals of transparency".
  Bob Hawke and Paul Keating were criticised for their National Media Liaison Service, nicknamed "Animals" by its critics, which monitored the media and highlighted gaffes by opposition MPs.
  John Howard's "Government Members' Secretariat" attracted similar complaints from the Labor opposition. Throughout the 2000s, and notably in the election years 2004 and 2007, the secretariat itself, and dirt in general, were hot political topics.
  Then, after its 2007 victory, and to the surprise of some on both sides of politics, federal Labor acted on a promise to rein in publicly funded dirt digging. Under then special minister for state John Faulkner, Labor introduced a code of conduct for ministerial staffers, and supplanted Howard's Members' Secretariat with a new caucus support unit barred from media monitoring, researching the opposition, and direct election campaigning.
  Tiernan says a notable decline in smear in federal politics followed. "Federally, the debate about political staffers being used to peddle innuendo and scandal seems to have subsided."
  By comparison, Victoria's politics remains untamed, marked by a well-resourced rawness of approach. The opposition complains of a string of recent incidents, notable among them being the allegations that Labor has accessed personal files of a former public servant who is now running as a Liberal candidate.
  Premier Brumby has about 50 people in his private office including 27 media advisers for himself and his ministers. In all, the Premier and his ministers are supported by more than 200 private staff, including administrative personnel.
  The opposition has a fraction of that number.
  WHILE Victorian Labor's so-called dirt unit involves staffers from other ministers' offices, it is masterminded from the Premier's private office by Brumby adviser Chris Reilly. Reilly, in turn, reports to the head of strategy, Tom Cargill, who hit the headlines before the 2006 election when a notebook owned by him, and including references to company searches on Mr Baillieu's wife and children, found its way into opposition hands.
  That slip-up tarnished even Steve Bracks's good-guy image, with the opposition dubbing the former premier the "doyen of dirt".
  Undeterred, this year Labor has returned to the pursuit of Baillieu and his business interests, spending considerable time and expense on an investigation of the Opposition Leader and his family.
  Private Labor research apparently indicated that the "Ted the Toff" theme played well with voters in 2006. So, too, did TV ads accusing Baillieu of personally profiting when he was president of the Victorian Liberals, from Jeff Kennett's school sales program.
  To highlight the success of such attack politics, Labor strategists also point to the victory over prominent independent Les Twentyman in the bitter Kororoit byelection in 2008.
  They say the controversial move of distributing a pamphlet claiming a vote for Twentyman was a vote for the Liberals, saved the day for the ALP. Twentyman's preferences actually went to Labor.
  In August, Tim Holding used dirt-unit research to claim, incorrectly, that Liberal housing spokeswoman Wendy Lovell had not disclosed she owned Westpac shares. The shares, in fact, belonged to Lovell's mother. Wendy Lovell is now suing Holding.
  Nor are all in Labor's ranks happy about the rough-house tactics, particularly the preoccupation with Baillieu's shareholdings.
  Senior MPs express concern about the moral and political wisdom of the dirt unit and its tactics.
  Anne Tiernan warns that smear, while sometimes very effective, can be double-edged, especially when voters believe they are picking up the bill for a blatantly partisan activity. "The use of public money on this kind of thing, if it is happening, would be seen by people as absolutely unacceptable."
  Similar concerns have also been raised by state government watchdog Ombudsman Victoria, which last year recommended a code of conduct for staff.
  Published in September last year, it is a scant document but does require that staffers ensure their involvement in political organisations does not "give rise to any actual or perceived conflicts of interest". Whatever that means.
  In this year's review of Victoria's anti-corruption system, former senior state bureaucrat Elizabeth Proust also identified lack of external accountability for ministerial staffers as a "gap" in the state system. Labor has promised to act on Proust's recommendations if re-elected.
  Would a Baillieu coalition government play cleaner? Labor certainly has no monopoly on political rough stuff and the Howard government was a case in point.
  In opposition at least, Ted Baillieu is generally regarded as a gentleman politician. But if taxpayer resources are a significant factor in modern dirt-digging, would being in government be a temptation for Baillieu to get down and dirty?