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December 15th, 2011 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda <!–
Police have searched through newsroom desks and computer hard drives at the Melbourne offices of The Age newspaper. Detectives say they’re investigating allegations that a political party database was accessed without authorisation. In a story last year The Age revealed that during the Victorian state election, Labor Party campaign workers relied on a database containing personal information about thousands of people.
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MATT PEACOCK: Police have searched through newsroom desks and computer hard drives at the Melbourne offices of The Age newspaper.
Detectives say they’re investigating allegations that a political party database was accessed without authorisation.
In a story last year The Age revealed that during the Victorian state election, Labor Party campaign workers relied on a database that contained personal information about thousands of people.
Liz Hobday reports.
LIZ HOBDAY: The Victorian secretary of the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance Louise Connor spoke to journalists at the newspaper moments before police rifled through their desks.
LOUISE CONNOR: I guess it’s a pretty tense mood in there at the moment. I mean no one in any workplace would appreciate the police arriving.
LIZ HOBDAY: While some at Fairfax would have been surprised to find a team of detectives in their newsroom this morning, the company’s group general counsel Gail Hambly says it was not unexpected.
GAIL HAMBLY: The matter’s been debated extensively and we’re discussing at the moment with the police the next steps in relation to what they’re looking for, what they want to do, and I think the key issue for us is if there are confidentiality questions regarding our sources – and I’m not sure where there are or not – then we’ll do everything we need to do to protect those sources.
LIZ HOBDAY: In November last year The Age published an article by journalists Nick McKenzie and Royce Millar detailing how the ALP keeps personal information about voters without their knowledge or consent.
The report said the ALP’s searchable database contained financial and medical information.
These are some of the file notes quotes in the report.
EXCERPT FROM REPORT (voiceover): She is having trouble paying her rent and bills. Landlord says she is one years in arrears. She disputes this.
EXCERPT FROM REPORT 2 (voiceover): Has prostate cancer and in pain with blood in urine.
EXCERPT FROM REPORT 3 (voiceover): Has not received superannuation co-contribution for himself and wife. Waiting on two lots of $1,500 in the system.
LIZ HOBDAY: Gail Hambly says she’s confident there’s been no breach of the law and the reports were in the public interest.
GAIL HAMBLY: I think there’s undoubtedly a public interest. I think that there’s no dispute that the Labor Party had databases with private information, quite a lot of private information relating to citizens and the fact that they held that material and the way that it had been obtained is a relevant issue.
LIZ HOBDAY: Louise Connor agrees the reports were in the public interest.
LOUISE CONNOR: My understanding is they were given a password to be able to access that data. The journalists looked to satisfy themselves that that indeed was what was happening. They spoke to the people whose files they had seen, advised people of what they had seen on the files and only actually published information about those people that authorised them to use that data.
LIZ HOBDAY: Gail Hambly says there hasn’t been anything like this in Australia for some years.
GAIL HAMBLY: It’s always a serious issue; journalists find it incredibly intrusive.
I think it’s too early to say just how confronting or how serious the raids are because we really don’t know what the next steps are.
LIZ HOBDAY: Police say they’ve executed warrants, their investigation is ongoing and they’re unable to comment further.
MATT PEACOCK: Liz Hobday.
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