JULIA Gillard left her job as a partner with law firm Slater & Gordon as a direct result of a secret internal probe in 1995 into controversial work she had done for her then boyfriend, a union boss accused of corruption, The Weekend Australian can reveal.
Nick Styant-Browne, a former equity partner of the firm, broke a 17-year silence yesterday to reveal that the firm's probe included a confidential formal interview with the Prime Minister - then an industrial lawyer - on September 11, 1995, which was "recorded and transcribed".***
Media management 101:
1. silence the source of real news - in this case Michael Smith, Glenn Milne, Pickering.
2. take over the story as though it was something you discovered yourself.
3. make the story go away.
Except it isn't working.
