LABOR is infiltrating social media sites to promote John Brumby and smear his political opponents in an underground campaign being run by staffers who work in the Premier’s taxpayer-funded private office.
The Age has obtained internal Labor documents revealing the identity, aliases and passwords of more than a dozen Labor players in the Twitter campaign as well as extensive lists of websites and blogs being trawled and manipulated by Labor’s social media team.
Each twitter alias has a ”purpose” labelled either ”Pro Labor”, ”Attack Dog” or ”Super Attack”, with a member of Labor’s three-person social media team responsible for mobilising them as campaign issues arise.
For example, during last week’s town hall debate, Steph Antz, who is described as pro-Labor, tweeted: ”What is a billion dollars? ted showed myki. could have shown his car, jet, diamond urinal.”
In a spreadsheet monitoring online forums, a note on an election discussion topic on an English Premier League website read: ”Nothing for days, seems to have petered out. monitor/enjoy them calling peter ryan a c–t.”
The social media team is run by Labor volunteers Phil Barker, James Wilson and Seamus Coleman, who also work in the Premier’s private office.
A work roster for the social media unit shows each of the three team members is also working for the Premier’s office during the campaign.
Labor campaign director Nick Reece said all three worked for Labor as volunteers in their personal time and the social media team was in no way funded by taxpayers.
