After a political punch-up, Labor tries to make up with AFP post-raid

Shorten has a lot of respect for the federal police. He just happens to think they’re goons.

Labor’s Brendan O’Connor makes a big call in Canberra, Tuesday night:

This grubby Prime Minister is willing to use the police like his plaything, his own personal asset, to go after his political opponents.

Labor’s deputy leader Tanya Plibersek tries to clean up his mess on the ABC’s RN Breakfast, yesterday:

Plibersek: No one’s suggesting that the Prime Minister picked up the phone and ordered the Australian Federal Police. The Australian Federal Police would never stand for that.

Fran Kelly: I think the quote was the Prime Minister was using the Federal Police as his plaything.

Don’t worry, it’s still all the government’s fault. Plibersek on RN Breakfast, continued:

What a coincidence that the media were already camped outside AWU offices as the Australian Federal Police arrived.

Will Bill Shorten just show us the GetUp! documents? Nah. The Labor leader in Canberra, yesterday:

Let’s really go to the heart of this matter; the government doesn’t like the fact that unions make donations to progressive causes and to Labor candidates, and the government don’t like me …

It was a wicked plot, by the way. The Opposition Leader continues:

I don’t question the integrity of the AFP. I question the integrity of Turnbull and the government.

What about the integrity of Queensland’s Labor government? They’re picking on our buddies at Aunty. ABC News online, yesterday:

The Queensland Police Service has executed a search warrant on the ABC in Brisbane, seeking leaked state cabinet documents …

Of course, federal Labor has never used the AFP for political purposes. Nuh uh. No, siree. No way, Jose. The Australian, July 19:

… (Lionel) Murphy, flanked by senior federal police, led a surprise raid on the ASIO headquarters in Melbourne, forcing their way in with the attorney-general personally interrogating spy bosses for hours while the police carted off documents.

One notorious political police raid was against an important figure in this newspaper’s history. Mark Day’s tribute in The Australian, July 15, 2014:

Maxwell Newton was the first editor of The Australian. He brought to the job boundless talent and inexhaustible energy … His tenure at the newspaper was brief … but his influence on the life of this nation is still felt …

Newton had upset John “Black Jack” McEwen, so Black Jack called the cops. Clyde Packer’s book No Return Ticket, 1984:

Fourteen Commonwealth policemen in plain clothes duly raided both of Newton’s houses in Deakin, examining every scrap of paper on the premises.

It didn’t get him a result, so McEwen tried a different approach. Newton speaks to Packer in No Return Ticket, continued:

He said in parliament that I was a Japanese spy.

Newton was a bit too busy to be a Japanese spy. Day in The Australian, June 15, 2014:

… a brothel owner … a husband three times, a father of six, a grandfather of five; an alcoholic and drug addict … an irrepressible goal-seeker and conqueror; a wit and showman extraordinaire, an emotional weakling, yet a man of enormous courage and one of the most generous human beings …