IBAC probe to focus on jobs for ALP allies

The Andrews government braces for a fallout with factional chiefs planted in taxpayer-funded jobs that are expected to come under scrutiny in anti-corruption hearings.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews. Picture: /Sarah Matray

Labor’s long-running practice of planting factional chiefs in taxpayer-funded jobs is expected to be a key focus of an anti-corruption hearing that opens in Melbourne on Monday.

The Victorian ALP and Andrews government are bracing for IBAC’s spotlight to fall on the appointment of factional leaders into electorate offices and plum ministerial adviser positions.

Labor’s Socialist Left, in particular, has exploited the rort to fund factional work, with sources saying the jobs have almost exclusively involved party political factional duties.

“They do very little, if anything for the electorates or ministerial portfolios, that could be considered of any value to the public,” one source said.

When Labor is in opposition a factional chief is typically planted in electorate offices where they earn salaries of around $80,000. But when Labor is in office, the taxpayer-funded factional position is usually in a ministerial office, with a salary of up to $150,000.

There is a growing anxiety within the Andrews government that senior ministers could be implicated in this rort if, as expected, it is dragged out of the factional darkness by IBAC.

IBAC’s Operation Watts is due to hold the first of its public hearings into the misuse of taxpayer-funded resources for party political purposes on Monday.

The investigation’s terms of reference, particularly the first order of business, have sent shockwaves through Labor: “Whether public officers, including Victorian Members of Parliament, are engaging in corrupt conduct while in public office by directing ministerial and electorate office staff to perform party‐political work during times when those staff are paid from public funds to perform ministerial or electorate work.”

IBAC will also look into any “actual or potential personal benefits” obtained by public employees, their families or their associates resulting from taxpayer-funded jobs being used for political work. And the anti-corruption body intends to investigate what systems and controls exist to track the expenditure of public funds for ministerial and electorate office staff.

Operation Watts was launched as a joint investigation between the Victorian Ombudsman and IBAC after claims on 60 Minutes about the misuse of public resources by Labor minister Adem Somyurek, who subsequently lost his ministerial position and was ejected from the ALP.

In the fallout from these branch stacking allegations, the ALP’s national executive ordered an audit of the Victorian ALP’s membership and 4500 of the ALP’s 16,000 members were taken off the party’s books.

Opposition Leader Matthew Guy renewed calls for Mr Andrews to stand down as a separate IBAC investigation, into the dealings between the UFU and his government, continues.