Michaelia Cash’s staffer quits over AWU raid tip-off
EMBATTLED Employment Minister Michaelia Cash has been grilled after her former adviser David De Garis resigned for tipping off the media over police raids on the Australian Workers’ Union.
NSW
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EMBATTLED cabinet minister Michaelia Cash has denied her former media adviser “took a bullet” for her by quitting after informing media about federal police raids on trade union offices.
Labor senator Doug Cameron resumed his grilling of Senator Cash this morning, saying he had been advised the staffer had already made the decision to leave the office before resigning.
“Is it possible he took a bullet for the team and yourself?” Senator Cameron asked.
“No,” Senator Cash replied.
She praised the former adviser for confessing, and said she does not believe any other staff were aware of the leak.
“It is actually very brave of him to also come forward and to admit his mistake and lose his employment as a result of what he did,” Senator Cash said.
Senator Cash urged the Australian Federal Police to investigate the circumstances surrounding media being tipped off to police raids on the Australian Workers’ Union.
The employment minister today told a Senate committee she had written to the Registered Organisations Commission after her senior media adviser’s admission he told journalists about the raids on Australian Workers’ Union offices in Melbourne and Sydney.
“It appears that information may have been inappropriately divulged,” Senator Cash wrote in the letter, which she read to a Senate estimates hearing this morning.
“I do not have the power to direct you in relation to such a matter, however one course of action which I would ask you to consider is referring the matter to the Australian Federal Police,” Senator Cash said.
At the end of the grilling, Senator Murray Watt asked her: “How can the Senate or the Australian public ever believe anything you or your office say again?”
Senator Cash repeated her previous answer, saying: “As I previously indicated, I was not aware of the raids until I watched them on the television.”
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The AWU this morning lodged a Freedom of Information request with the office of Senator Cash to try and determine exactly what she and her staff knew about raids on the union’s offices in Sydney and Melbourne.
AWU national secretary Daniel Walton said the union had requested any correspondence between Senator Cash, her office and the Registered Organisations Commission, in addition to any correspondence between the minister and relevant staff members.
This could include any text messages, emails, phone lists and other correspondence.
“We do not believe she was not made aware (of the raids) and have made a Freedom of Information request to get to the bottom of it,” Mr Walton said.
“The AFP have all of our documents. We cannot release our documents at this point in time, because as you saw they are in zip locked bags … but the Minister can come clean today.”
Mr Walton accused Ms Cash of “throwing her staffer under the bus”.
It comes as senior Turnbull government ministers rush to the defence of the embattled employment minister over the raids on the Australian Workers’ Union relating to donations made by Opposition Leader Bill Shorten.
Senator Cash had spent yesterday under fire in Senate Estimates about how media outlets knew to turn up to the Australian Workers’ Union offices in Sydney and Melbourne 15 minutes before the Australian Federal Police arrived to seize documents relating to Mr Shorten’s donation to activist group GetUp! 10 years ago.
Throughout the day Ms Cash had said she only found out about the raids when she saw them on television about 4.45pm. She also had denied her office was behind the leak to journalists.
Last night adviser David De Garis, an essential part of her office, confessed to her that he was responsible for telling some media outlets about the raid.
He said he had found out about the raids from another contact in the media.
Defence Industry Minister Christopher Pyne said Ms Cash’s staff member had resigned and paid “a very heavy price”, comparing him to staff in Labor’s foreign affairs spokeswoman Penny Wong’s office who was “at the centre of a campaign to try and remove the Deputy Prime Minister over his New Zealand citizenship”.
“The reality is Michaelia Cash told the Senate the truth and as soon as she found out that she’d been misled she corrected the record,” Mr Pyne said.
“That’s all you can ask her to do in the circumstances ... I think she’s done the right thing.”
But Labor is demanding Senator Cash resign, labelling it “impossible” to believe she had not spoken to her staff member before telling Senate estimates hearing there had been no leak.
“Here is what we are meant to believe, that Michaelia Cash misled the Senate five times on what she herself said was a very serious allegation that she was offended to hear,” Tony Burke, the manager of opposition business, said.
“We are meant to believe her office watched her do that and didn’t tell her what had happened.”
This morning, Mr Burke said: “Two things we know for sure; one, Michaelia Cash has to go, and two, the prime minister is up to his neck in this.”
Social Services Minister Christian Porter backed his Cabinet colleague, and said Senator Cash would not resign.
“The reality is that ministers aren’t telepathic. Michealia Cash did not know about the actions of the staff member,” he said.
Labor’s deputy leader Tanya Plibersek this morning, however, said she did not believe Senator Cash.
“It is extraordinary to have a minister repeatedly mislead in the way that she did, and it is inconceivable that the minister did not know that her office was involved in tipping off journalists about a police raid,” she said.
“Of course, ministers have resigned for much less than this.”
Senator Cash and the Registered Organisations Commission are back before a Senate estimates hearing this morning.
The leak featured in an explosive Parliamentary Question Time with Bill Shorten accusing Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull of using the AFP and the Registered Organisations Commission to attack Labor.
Mr Shorten now faces a fine of up to $4000 if a federal investigation finds he did not have authorisation when he was the boss of the Australian Workers’ Union in 2006 to donate $100,000 of union funds to GetUp!, whose board he also sat on.
A source on the AWU’s National Executive at the time told The Daily Telegraph yesterday Mr Shorten’s $50,000 donation to GetUp! was properly authorised before it was made, and the retired executive members and directors are willing to testify to this.
The Turnbull Government is applying intense scrutiny to the period before Mr Shorten entered politics, when he was an Australian Superannuation director, a GetUp! director and also the national secretary of the AWU.
Donations flowed between the Labor-aligned entities Mr Shorten held senior positions on.
Australian Super donated $27,500 to AWU in 2006, which in turn made two $50,000 donations to GetUp! in the year ending June 30, 2006.
The AWU also made a $25,000 donation to Mr Shorten’s safe seat of Maribyrnong when he ran for federal politics at the 2007 election.
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Senator Cash asked the Registered Organisation Commission to investigate whether Mr Shorten had authorisation from the AWU board to make the donation after the union failed to respond to a media inquiry.
The Commission received a tip the AWU was at risk of destroying or tampering with evidence, and applied successfully for a search warrant so the AFP could seize the documents, which it did in raids of the national head office and the Victorian branch on Monday night.
The AWU claims it would have been happy to hand over relevant documents but was not asked before the raids took place.
The ROC, which is conducting the investigation, agreed not to take any documents seized by the AFP until the Federal Court rules on the audit.
Mr Shorten said the investigation, which started last Friday, was a “grubby” smear.
“The government shouldn’t be using taxpayer resources on this nonsense,” he said.