How did she get away with it for so long?

In other news you won’t read today:

A Melbourne woman who stole nearly $12 billion from her employer and gambled on re-election has been sentenced to eight years in jail.

Julia Eileen Gillard, 51, of Altona, pleaded guilty in the Victorian Supreme Court to multiple counts of theft from the Australian taxpayer. She had worked for them for 16 years.

She took the money in numerous separate transactions over nearly three years between 2010 and 2013, and gambled it away through reckless and unaudited government programs.

The Victorian Supreme Court heard she also used the money to support her live-in lover and keep him supplied with first-class tickets, invitations to lavish functions, and corporate boxes.

In sentencing, Justice Electorate described it as a massive fraud covered up with a sophisticated system of false accounting.

The court heard Gillard became "lost" in political games.

Her lawyers argued Gillard’s dissociative identity disorder, commonly understood as spilt personality, meant she was not in complete control at the time.

Treating psychiatrist, Dr Fairfax Media, told the court Gillard has at least 10 personalities, including one called The Real Julia.

Judge Electorate accepted Dr Media believed in the disorder, but ruled it did not reduce Gillard’s culpability.

"You were fully aware of what you were doing," he told Gillard.

"Moreover, your claim that you did not know what you were doing does not sit well with your actions in deliberately covering up your thefts through false accounting."

Judge Electorate said her dishonesty was "calculated and protracted" using "elaborate" bogus invoicing.

Gillard will serve a minimum five years jail before being eligible for parole.

Philippa Martyr blogs at Transverse City.