Opinion: Victorian Labor redshirts scandal has parallels in Queensland

Claims of Victorian Labor misusing taxpayer funds to campaign for re-election bear striking similarities to a Queensland case, writes Des Houghton.

There will be some very nervous Labor figures in Queensland watching how Victoria’s redshirts rorts scandal unfolds.

Court transcripts point to claims of a strikingly similar misuse of government funds in Queensland.

The Queensland Industrial Relations Commission heard evidence Labor staffers were redirected to work on their ministers’ re-election campaigns during the caretaker period in the lead-up to the 2017 election.

Some staff members, including press secretaries and even a chief-of-staff, set up shop in a minister’s electoral office, the QIRC heard.

In fact, every staffer in every ministerial office including the premier’s was expected to campaign for Labor.

It means taxpayers have been subsidising ALP election campaigns.

Victoria’s Ombudsman Deborah Glass found in 2018 that Labor had misused $388,000 of public money through the redshirts arrangement, which saw campaign organisers wearing red Labor Party shirts and employed as electorate officers.

Her report to Parliament said the Labor Party misused the taxpayer funds.

Glass did not recommend criminal charges, but suggested Labor repay the money, which it did.

The story took a sinister turn this week with The Age revealing a criminal investigation into the affair was blocked.

Victorian Premier Dan Andrews

Detectives in Victoria’s fraud squad were considering arresting and prosecuting up to 16 Labor government MPs.

But their plan was secretly halted by superior officers.

The Age said whistleblowers confirmed senior officers ordered the 16 MPs “not be arrested, photographed, searched if they are interviewed”.

The file also stated the intervention by senior police was to remain a secret, the paper reported. Surely such improper interference would not happen in Queensland. I hope not, anyway.

A year ago I reported that Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and her Cabinet colleagues dodged a bullet when a senior press secretary accepted a large sum of money to drop a wrongful-dismissal claim against the Government.

Neil Doorley, a seasoned print and television reporter and producer, took his fight to the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission and also ran an action for “political discrimination” in the Human Rights Commission.

Part of his job was to “clean up” for the Government and the Office of Premier and Cabinet and to “contain any fallout”, court documents showed.

While working for the then environment minister Steven Miles, Doorley said he soon found out what else he was expected to do.

Former spin doctor Neil Doorley

“It was made very clear to (Doorley) that the minister and the minister’s senior staff would be expected to campaign for the minister and the ALP, including outside working hours and on weekends,” Doorley alleged.

He declined to do so.

Doorley was later accused by staff in the Premier’s Department of leaking to the media.

However in the affidavits he sensationally accused Miles of being the leaker of five stories supposedly showing the previous LNP government in a bad light.

Doorley alleged these stories ranged from confidential Newman government Cabinet documents to secret modelling on the costs to save the Great Barrier Reef, the purchase of a cattle station, cuts to the public service and contamination at Linc Energy’s underground coal gasification plant on the Darling Downs.

As part of the settlement, the veteran journo’s lips were sealed by a confidentiality agreement.

The Government did, in effect, pay to make the story go away.

Doorley successfully won compensation for lost employment and income and damage to his career prospects and personal reputation, and for pain, stress, anxiety and humiliation.

A trail of affidavits at his hearing exposed allegations of ministerial wrongdoing, backstabbing, cover-ups, bullying, professional sabotage and infighting in top Labor ranks.

Minister Steven Miles

Doorley became a senior spin doctor in 2015 and for three years worked for ministers Mick de Brenni, Miles, Leeanne Enoch and Craig Crawford.

The ministers pulled down the shutters and the media dropped off the story.

Now there are allegations of wrongdoing swirling around a number of ALP figures in state and federal politics.

Former Victorian minister Adem Somyurek, facing an anti-corruption investigation into separate allegations involving Labor MPs, tried this week to distance himself from redshirts.

He told an inquiry that he warned Premier Daniel Andrews in 2014 of his concerns that public funds were being misused.

In Federal Parliament this week, Prime Minister Scott Morrison was drawn into the integrity debate.

“I remember it was former Labor senator Dastyari who disgraced himself by undermining Australia’s sovereignty in relation to a foreign country,” he told the House.

He said Dastyari left Parliament in disgrace.

Morrison said several state and federal Labor members faced charges.

“They’ve got enough people in Silverwater prison now to start a branch of the Labor Party there,’’ he added.

Des Houghton is an independent media consultant and a former editor of The Courier-Mail, the Sunday Mail, Sunday Sun and Gold Coast Sun.