The left have deployed full sideshow Alley on this.
LABOR’S rorts-for-votes scheme is under investigation as Parliament’s Upper House president declared that diverting electorate office funds for political campaigning was forbidden.
Hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars, supposed to have been used to pay for MPs’ electorate officers, instead was used to help supply party organisers for an unprecedented election campaign blitz by Labor, the Herald Sun revealed.
Legislative Council president Bruce Atkinson announced on Wednesday that he and Legislative Assembly Speaker Telmo Languiller would probe allegations so as to establish whether a wider inquiry was required.
The scandal, sparked by claims of rorting by three Labor MPs and a senior party figure, engulfed Parliament on Wednesday.
A defiant Premier Daniel Andrews declared: “There are rules, and they have been followed.”
But Mr Atkinson said: “It is clearly set by the presiding officers that the people that are employed by the Parliament and paid for by the Parliament are there to support members of Parliament in their electoral duties and to support and assist constituents. They are not there for the campaign.”
Premier Daniel Andrews in Parliament on Wednesday. Picture: Nicole Garmston
“And that is the understood position,” Mr Atkinson said. LABOR SHAKEN BY RORTS CRISIS JAMES CAMPBELL: RORTS SAGA HAS LONG WAY TO GO
Coalition MPs seized on rorts allegations during the most explosive Question Time of the year, with several thrown out of the House for holding up the Herald Sun’s front-page report.
There is now open despair within the Government about leaks and caucus turmoil.
“We can’t remember a Labor Premier nine months in facing this level of internal dissent. And it’s all self-inflicted,” a senior Labor figure said on Wednesday night.
