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Yes, it seems so. Was this a deliberate ploy to make sure those who had been investigating this issue were not present?
This from the link below:
Although the past week’s coverage had been dominated by Thomas, a multi-Walkley Award-winning investigative reporter, he was not in Canberra to ask questions and only some of those in the room had sifted through the old AWU documents…
Is the behaviour below how a PM's power should really be used???
Excerpt from David Crowe, National Affairs Editor and reposted on Bolt's blog:
"Media management, played hard:
Gillard had called The Australian’s editor-in-chief, Chris Mitchell, on Sunday night to find a way to end the coverage… Previous disputes with News Limited - over reports by Glenn Milne in 2007 at The Sunday Telegraph and last year at The Australian - had led to similar phone calls. She seized on errors and called executives and editors to shut down the stories…
On Thursday she finally saw an opportunity to stage a forceful attack on all the reports. Up since 4am to scour the media, the Prime Minister’s team had found an error in one of The Australian’s stories where the “slush fund” was referred to as a “trust fund” - a mistake that may seem minor but can mean the world to a lawyer.
The mistake appeared in a report by one of Thomas’s colleagues that was not central to the AWU matter… For all that, however, the problem over one short word was enough for Gillard to challenge five days of reporting…
Rather than contact The Australian she called News Limited group editorial director Campbell Reid at 9.15am and demanded an apology by 10am on all News websites. The Australian apologised immediately.
Preparation began for a lunchtime press conference, where Gillard would answer the assertions on condition this was the only time she took questions on the matter… And from the beginning Gillard presented her case as a response to the “smear campaign” of the far Right - or in the phrase she used later, the “misogynists and the nut-jobs on the internet”.
In a way, the wild claims of the online world became blurred with the reports of The Australian and its account of Gillard’s own words in the old transcript.
Although the past week’s coverage had been dominated by Thomas, a multi-Walkley Award-winning investigative reporter, he was not in Canberra to ask questions and only some of those in the room had sifted through the old AWU documents…
The Australian’s editors were firing off emails to the newspaper’s representatives in the press conference. But reporter Sid Maher, seated in the front row recalling the Prime Minister’s misguided accusation on Sunday that editor-at-large Paul Kelly was being fed questions about the matter by his masters, was understandably reluctant to reach for his iPhone. "
Gillard had called The Australian’s editor-in-chief, Chris Mitchell, on Sunday night to find a way to end the coverage… Previous disputes with News Limited - over reports by Glenn Milne in 2007 at The Sunday Telegraph and last year at The Australian - had led to similar phone calls. She seized on errors and called executives and editors to shut down the stories…
On Thursday she finally saw an opportunity to stage a forceful attack on all the reports. Up since 4am to scour the media, the Prime Minister’s team had found an error in one of The Australian’s stories where the “slush fund” was referred to as a “trust fund” - a mistake that may seem minor but can mean the world to a lawyer.
The mistake appeared in a report by one of Thomas’s colleagues that was not central to the AWU matter… For all that, however, the problem over one short word was enough for Gillard to challenge five days of reporting…
Rather than contact The Australian she called News Limited group editorial director Campbell Reid at 9.15am and demanded an apology by 10am on all News websites. The Australian apologised immediately.
Preparation began for a lunchtime press conference, where Gillard would answer the assertions on condition this was the only time she took questions on the matter… And from the beginning Gillard presented her case as a response to the “smear campaign” of the far Right - or in the phrase she used later, the “misogynists and the nut-jobs on the internet”.
In a way, the wild claims of the online world became blurred with the reports of The Australian and its account of Gillard’s own words in the old transcript.
Although the past week’s coverage had been dominated by Thomas, a multi-Walkley Award-winning investigative reporter, he was not in Canberra to ask questions and only some of those in the room had sifted through the old AWU documents…
The Australian’s editors were firing off emails to the newspaper’s representatives in the press conference. But reporter Sid Maher, seated in the front row recalling the Prime Minister’s misguided accusation on Sunday that editor-at-large Paul Kelly was being fed questions about the matter by his masters, was understandably reluctant to reach for his iPhone. "
Read more: The AWU scandal - How the media failed