Daniel Andrews blames party HQ over tapes

VICTORIAN Labor leader Daniel Andrews yesterday cut loose his party’s head office over the ­stolen tapes affair.

VICTORIAN Labor leader Daniel Andrews yesterday cut loose his party’s head office over the ­stolen tapes affair, emphatically declaring that no one in his personal office was involved in the distribution of the recording.

This means the Opposition Leader believes the only real culprit in handing the recording to a Liberal Party operative for dissemination must be at Labor’s headquarters, which is staffed by factional opponents.

“No one in my office, no one on my staff, had any involvement with this matter,’’ he said.

This is despite persistent speculation in the ALP that Mr Andrews’s staff were part of a broader conspiracy to dissemin­ate the recording of former Victorian premier Ted Baillieu attacking colleagues in an unauthorised conversation recorded by Fairfax Media.

The row over the tape has, for the first time in nearly four years, raised serious questions about the viability of Mr Andrews’s ­leadership, with an election due on ­November 29.

Victorian Premier Denis ­Napthine yesterday undertook to provide police with any evidence of wrongdoing unearthed by the Liberal Party during its investi­gation into the scandal.

Labor’s assistant Victorian ­secretary Kosmos Samaras has admitted intercepting and destroying a Sunday Age recorder containing at least four unauthorised conversations with political figures.

He is one of the four people secretly recorded and he was furious the recording, which was found in the party’s lost ­property after the May state ­conference, was ever made. Mr Samaras copied one of the files from the ­recording but says that on legal advice he did not distribute it.

Despite this, the Baillieu conversation found its way into Liberal hands and was widely distributed to hundreds of people, severely embarrassing the former premier.

The matter is being investi­gated by Victoria Police, and lawyer David Galbally has warned theft charges could follow because the recording belonged to the person who recorded it. It is also an offence carrying a penalty of up to five years’ jail for anyone who wilfully and unlawfully destroys or damages any property.

Mr Andrews said no one in his office had spoken to police, adding: “The theories about this will almost always be more interesting than the truth.’’

Dr Napthine said that it was up to police to determine whether a theft had occurred. “It looks like a theft, it smells like a theft, I think it is a theft,’’ he said. “The Liberal Party will fully co-operate with the police; if police ask for information, it will be fully provided.’’

The Sunday Age has alleged to police that ­reporter ­Farrah Tomazin’s dictaphone was stolen at the ALP state conference in May, although ­security footage showed it had been lost.

This led to police questioning Mr Samaras and an admission by him that he had destroyed the ­dictaphone because it contained a series of unauthorised conversations, including one he had with Tomazin.