Daniel Andrews adviser in office work twist

Daniel Andrews’ taxpayer-funded adviser attends Victorian Labor Party high-level election campaign strategy sessions.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews. Picture: David Crosling

One of Daniel Andrews’s most senior advisers has regularly attended Victorian Labor Party election campaign meetings during office hours where local government, state and federal campaign strategies are planned.

The Premier’s office said on Wednesday the adviser, his deputy chief of staff Jessie McCrone, takes an annual leave day or unpaid leave when she attends the ALP’s regular election campaign meetings on his behalf.

Victorian ALP records show that on multiple occasions since Labor won office in 2014, Ms McCrone has participated in the meetings. The minutes record the adviser as a “proxy” representing Mr Andrews at the ALP’s campaign committee, the party’s key election strategy body that typically meets during office hours on Fridays.

The issue of taxpayer-funded Andrews government staff performing party political or factional work has become a key focus of IBAC’s anti-corruption investigation into the activities of dumped Labor warlord Adem Somyurek.

A Labor figure said the fallout from the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission’s investigation had the potential to reverberate through all political parties as it was commonplace for publicly funded ministerial staff to attend party campaign strategy meetings.

While Operation Watts has targeted Mr Somyurek’s alleged branch stacking and use of ­taxpayer-funded staff to perform factional duties, Labor’s Red Shirts rort has been a major focus.

Labor was forced to apologise and repay $388,000 to taxpayers after it emerged that publicly funded electorate officers were used to campaign for the ALP in the 2014 election.

Minutes from the Victorian ALP’s campaign committee meeting, via Zoom, on Friday, April 24, 2020, list Ms McCrone as a “proxy” for Mr Andrews. Minutes from about a dozen other campaign committee meetings in recent years also list her as Mr Andrews’s “proxy”.

Mr Andrews’s office declined to comment on Wednesday, other than to say Ms McCrone and all ministerial staff were required to take annual or unpaid leave to participate in political ­activity during business hours.

Former Labor treasurer John Lenders – the architect of the Red Shirts, who was slammed by the Ombudsman for “crossing the line in designing the rort – is listed as attending the April 24 election campaign committee meeting.

Minutes from multiple other campaign election strategy meetings also list Mr Lenders as ­attending.

In the wake of the Red Shirts rort and the Ombudsman’s report, the Victorian parliament amended the Parliamentary ­Administration Act in early 2019 to tighten rules around electorate officers engaging in election ­campaigning to ban them “promoting or opposing … the election of any candidate at the election; a registered political party; or an elected member.” The amendments were narrowly focused on electorate officers and did not cover ministerial advisers.

In a rebuke of the political system, IBAC Commissioner Robert Redlich this week said: “Is not the public entitled to look to parliament as the first place to ensure that not only members of parliament but their staff confine their activities to compliance with and discharging their public duties?”

Victoria’s Tourism and Major Events Minister Martin Pakula, a former attorney-general, has denied failing to co-operate with investigations into the Red Shirts rort. He said he would not speculate about whether he would participate in a new investigation into the rip-off.

“It’s been investigated more often than the Kennedy assassination,” he said.

“As I recall, there have been two police inquiries, an ombudsman’s inquiry, a department of parliamentary services inquiry and a parliamentary upper house inquiry.

“I am not one to give advice to Victoria Police. I’m saying it’s been investigated five times and I’m not in the business of telling Victoria Police what it should or shouldn’t do.”

Asked why he and other lower house MPs did not co-operate with the ombudsman’s investi­gation and the subsequent police investigation, Mr Pakula said: “I don’t accept the proposition at all.

“I think there was co-operation. At the time … there was a suggestion I hadn’t co-operated with Victoria Police, which was completely untrue. I never was asked to,” he said.

He said he didn’t propose to rehash a line of inquiry about how he came to divert $5356 for the Red Shirts rort. “This matter was canvassed in enormous detail and I answered extensive questions about it at the time. I don’t propose to go through it all again.”