As far as they affected public office and public funds, the report found that Labor branch-stacking was rife, and factional hacks were bought off by promises of parliamentary seats and taxpayer-funded appointments. It stated that such practices were “condoned or even actively encouraged by senior figures,” including Member of Parliaments (MP) bullying staff, nepotism, forging of signatures, and attempts to interfere with government grants. Even so, the report did not recommend any criminal charges.
All this started in November last year. Following admissions from former Labor MP Adem Somyurek about his involvement in the red shirts scandal that he labelled “the biggest political scandal in Victorian history,” Somyurek himself introduced a motion in the upper house of Victoria’s parliament for the state’s IBAC to investigate the party’s rort a second time.
The motion was carried successfully—and indeed unexpectedly—by 19 votes to 17 when Labor MP Kaushaliya Vaghela crossed the floor to vote in favour of the motion, risking expulsion from the ALP by doing so.
Victoria Labor Party Scandals
Andrews now faces a fresh investigation into the red shirts scandal ahead of the November state election.Meanwhile, Andrews promised he would clean up the mess by adopting all the recommendations of the report and go further.
Andrews said on July 20 that he takes “full responsibility” and apologised for Labor’s “shameful, deplorable, disgusting, and absolutely disgraceful behaviour.”
But these are weasel words. Andrews has a history of obfuscation and deflecting blame and, unfortunately, getting away with it.
“The main target of the commission’s investigation, former minister Adem Somyurek, has always maintained that the premier, as a former assistant secretary of the Labor Party and left faction boss, was up to his eyeballs in all of it,” Credlin said.
“Something the premier, unsurprisingly, has denied.”
In 2020, during the hotel quarantine fiasco, which involved 800 deaths and months of lockdown, Andrews said, “I am responsible for everything that goes on in the Victorian government.” Later he apologised for the failed quarantine system.
However, let’s never forget that shortly after, during the Coate Inquiry into the fiasco, he threw health minister Jenny Mikakos under the bus, stating she was responsible.
Andrews’s treatment of Mikakos caused her to leave politics.
Where Does the Opposition Stand?
However, as Patrick Durkin wrote in the Australian Financial Review, it remains to be seen whether this latest scandal will have any impact on the election result. The reason for this is that the Liberal/National Opposition, currently led by Matthew Guy, seems determined to remain in opposition.Melbourne was the world’s most locked-down city between 2020 and 2021. Yet throughout all that time, the so-called conservatives refused to defend fundamental rights and freedoms, even when a pregnant mother was arrested in her house in her pyjamas for posting on social media her opposition to lockdowns, when grandmothers were being harassed in parks, or when people were being fired at with rubber bullets. I could go on.
Announcing a 50 percent cut in emissions is, yet again, a classic case of trying to appeal to those who will never vote for the centre-right Coalition parties, all the while alienating their voting base even more.
Victorians want to be rid of Andrews, but that can only be achieved if the alternative government forgets the nonsense that is focus group polling and offers true centre-right product differentiation, with properly thought-through, realistic and costed policies.
Trying to out-left the left is no way to win an election. You only need to look at what has happened to the Liberals at various state elections and the May federal election over the last 18 months to see that.