Media Cover For Minister's Rescue

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Federal police have raided the home of a government employee seeking computer and other records indicating whether Ms. Tjanara Goreng had contact with the newspaper, the (NIT). This followed revelations in the paper that a senior federal Aboriginal affairs bureaucrat adopted "a bogus identity" to support claims by the Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Mal Brough, that "pedophile rings" operated in Aboriginal communities. Brough was widely criticised after failing to produce any evidence to support his claims. In June, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Lateline program broadcast an interview with an "anonymous former youth worker" who supported Brough's claims and sensationally referred to young girls being held as "sex slaves." The NIT revealed the interviewee was Gregory Andrews, a branch head in the government agency advising Brough on Aboriginal policy.