Victorian Labor rorting
The Age reports:
Victorians have a right to feel disappointed and angry that the ALP siphoned almost $400,000 of taxpayers’ money to help secure its unexpected victory in the 2014 state election, and then spent a further $1 million on a legal tilt to block the Victorian Ombudsman from investigating.
Her probe into the egregious breach of parliamentary regulations by the ALP was triggered by whistleblowers. They were upset by Labor MPs wrongly signing off on payments based on falsified timesheets that billed taxpayers for ALP campaigning by workers employed by the Parliament to help constituents, not parties.
As it turned out, almost two dozen Labor politicians were – some of them perhaps unwittingly, Ombudsman Deborah Glass found – part of a scam to game the system.
And in NZ we had The Parliamentary Service funding an Auckland office for Labour headed up by Matt McCarten. Anyone think that office was doing parliamentary work instead of campaigning?
Premier Daniel Andrews and his government came to power promising honesty and probity after some scandals undermined the Liberal-led government, but have transgressed far too often.
Mr Andrews was clearly the chief beneficiary of the so-called ”rorts for votes” scheme. The ALP has repaid the money, despite claiming innocence. The Andrews government may well pay a far higher price. There is an election later this year. And now both the Coalition and the Labor Party go to the ballot tainted by questions of probity: the lobsters versus the red shirts.
For the sake of our democracy, our watchdogs need to be given the powers they need to keep our parliaments honest.
This is the same Government that had a Minister use VIP Transport to chauffeur his pet dogs between his Melbourne house and his country home.