Daniel Andrews stands by top cop’s ‘integrity’

Daniel Andrews yesterday castigated critics of police Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton for questioning his integrity.

Daniel Andrews yesterday plunged Victoria Police deeper into a political quagmire when he castigated critics of police Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton for questioning his integrity.

The Premier’s intervention has further exposed Mr Ashton’s office to claims of politicisation just months after being sworn in to the position.

Mr Andrews defended Mr Ashton’s honour after The Australian revealed the Premier’s former chief of staff had been seconded to take the same role in the Chief Commissioner’s office.

The decision by Mr Ashton to second Brett Curran to the post has staggered Coalition MPs in the wake of the Simon Overland affair, which led to Mr Overland’s resignation after the force released misleading crime statistics.

The opposition has attacked the Curran appointment and sent a thinly veiled warning to Mr Ashton about the need for political independence.

Mr Andrews yesterday did not directly answer questions on whether Mr Ashton had left himself open to claims of political bias with the Curran appointment but said it was “wrong” to question Mr Ashton’s integrity.

“It is my view, and it is the position of our government, that Graham Ashton is a person of the utmost integrity — someone who has spent his whole working life keeping Victorians, and ­indeed Australians, safe and it is wrong to question his integrity in any way.”

Mr Andrews’s decision to ­defend Mr Ashton will help shore up the Chief Commissioner’s position while Labor ­remains in office. But it also has created an even sharper divide between Labor and the Coalition because a former senior Labor adviser is now running Mr ­Ashton’s office.

Mr Curran was Mr Andrews’s chief of staff until the run-up to the 2014 election, acting as the most senior administrative and political adviser. He then ­returned to the force — from where he had worked in the past — and rescinded his Labor membership.

But the Coalition views the Curran secondment as highly political and a risk to the opposition because the chief of staff to the commissioner is often the conduit in correspondence and discussions to the force command.

Referring to former prime minister Tony Abbott’s former chief of staff, Mr Ashton yesterday sought to downplay the significance of the role being held by Mr Curran until a full-time ­replacement is found.

“It’s not a Peta Credlin-type role, where it’s providing this key level of — some sort of advice to me,” he told the ABC. “I make the decisions in my office and I will continue to do so.”

Mr Curran’s secondment comes after years of Coalition anger over what it claimed was the politicisation of the force under former commissioners Mr Overland and Christine Nixon.

Mr Overland and Ms Nixon were Labor appointments and at various times were accused of being too close to the government, claims they denied.

Most Coalition MPs favoured dumping Mr Overland soon after winning the 2010 election, with the position becoming a political football in its first year of office.