Graham Ashton says police following ’letter of the law’ in probing Labor rorts-for-votes
VICTORIA’S police chief says the force is following “the letter of the law” by probing Labor’s red shirts rort on the eve of the state election as the saga sparked another heated Question Time in Parliament.
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VICTORIAN police chief Graham Ashton says the force is following “the letter of the law” by probing Labor’s red shirts rort on the eve of the state election.
The chief commissioner says he has asked his officers to “not treat these matters any differently than you would any other matters”.
“You can’t control the timings of these things,” Mr Ashton told the ABC today.
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“We’d rather not be doing any investigations of politicians, frankly, but we get complaints and we’ve got to respond to those complaints and that’s what we endeavour to do.”
“We follow the letter of the law and the legal advice that we get, and that’s what we do in every case.”
He said the force’s decision to launch a formal investigation was based on its legal advice on “potentially criminal issues”, rather than the Victorian Ombudsman’s investigation of ethical issues and “general misconduct”.
The rorts saga sparked a heated Question Time in Parliament today, with the government using its numbers to boot out Liberal MP David Southwick for four sitting days after he called Premier Daniel Andrews a “crook” and refused to apologise.
Mr Southwick said the six Labor ministers caught up in the rorts investigation should be stood down, rather than him being “kicked out”.
It comes as Ombudsman Deborah Glass confirmed her office would investigate a group of Liberal and National MPs after a state government referral.
The government used its numbers in the Legislative Assembly this week to pass a motion forcing the Ombudsman to investigate dealings connected to former Liberal state director Damien Mantach.
It requested the Ombudsman consider whether 40 current or former Coalition MPs knew about falsified invoiced used by Mr Mantach to steal $1.5 million from the Liberal Party.
It also referred claims about Nationals MP Emma Kealy’s newspaper advertising invoices.
The government’s referral to have other parties’ parliamentary budgets investigated comes after it made multiple attempts to block the Ombudsman from probing its own party’s rorts-for-votes scandal.
The government said the matter must be looked at, despite producing no evidence of wrongdoing and Mr Mantach having been jailed more than two years ago.
But the Opposition said the government was attempting to deflect heat over Victoria Police’s rorts investigation.
The Ombudsman’s office said in a statement that the referral “requires Ms Glass to investigate matters concerning invoices current and former Liberal and Nationals MPs certified for payment by the Department of Parliamentary Services”.
“Ms Glass will be making inquiries to determine the status of any other investigations into this matter, including with Victoria Police,” the office said.