But on September 12 last year someone using a computer in the NSW Premier's Department - which includes Mr Iemma's office and those of his cabinet ministers - removed all traces of the outburst from Wikipedia. The revelations come thanks to a new website, Wikiscanner, which traces the digital fingerprints of those who make changes to entries in Wikipedia. The Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet was found to have made 126 edits on subjects ranging from the children overboard affair to the Treasurer, Peter Costello.

On June 28 an employee of the department modified Mr Costello's entry to remove a reference to the nickname "Captain Smirk". And in an embarrassing act of vandalism, another employee last year modified an entry on a style of martial arts to add the sentence "Poo bum dicky wee wee".

Meanwhile, in the Premier's department, an employee edited Bob Carr's entry to change a sentence which read "The Bank reportedly pays him $AUD500,000 per annum" to "Media reports claimed that someone of Mr Carr's experience would be likely to be paid around $AUD500,000 per annum, but neither this nor any other figure has been confirmed by the Bank or Mr Carr". And on July 1 someone in the department stepped in to clean up abuse targeted at Morris Iemma on the NSW Department of Education and Training entry. The Opposition Leader, Kevin Rudd, appeared on Channel 7 this morning to accuse Prime Minister John Howard of "engaging public servants to change Wikipedia".

"My own personal staff, I'm sure, look through Wikipedia to make factual changes, no excuses about that, but using public service departments to make sure the truth is delivered according to Howard?," he said. "It is entirely legitimate for your personal political staff to make changes of a factual nature, but to engage public servants to go out there and re-edit history, it strikes me as odd to say the least."

A spokesman for Prime Minister John Howard said he did not ask any of the staff of his department to make any changes or edits to Wikipedia. A spokesman for Mr Iemma said he did not initiate any of the edits traced back to the NSW Premier's Department and they could have been made by any of the 4000 State Government employees on the network. Some changes made by staff in the Premier's department were not political in nature but could be considered pure vandalism.

In the entry for the "Sydney Roosters" football club, a departmental employee repeatedly replaced all of the text with sentences claiming the history of the club "revolves around them promoting mens heath care and skin cleansing products" and that they "base their pride on things such as stealing players from other clubs and calling them their own, and cheating the NRL salary cap and getting away with it because no one gives a Shit about them". Around the same time in July this year, someone on the same network updated Bulldogs player Willie Mason's entry with the sentence: "Mason used to have a huge afro hair-style that made him appear over 200cm tall."