Egregious and extensive crimes. But hey, they weren’t committed by a pregnant mum in pyjamas.
“This investigation should sink Andrews because if it’s a true and fair report, it will show he was up top his neck in the misuse of public funds.
“He either directed or acquiesced to the misuse of public funds. Since when does a bank robber get caught and get to say to police, ‘I’m sorry, I’m giving the money back’ and be let go. Imagine if an employee misappropriated $400,000 from an employer? That’s what Labor have done.”Victorian shadow treasurer David Davis said Mr Andrews’ full evidence should be released to the public before the November state election.
The IBAC and ombudsman investigation is likely to trigger a parliamentary inquiry and possible review by Victoria Police, who investigated and considered arresting and prosecuting up to 16 Andrews government MPs over the “red shirts” rorting scandal.
The ombudsman found in 2018 that the Labor Party misused $388,000 in taxpayer funds in falsely signing timesheets for Labor field organisers and campaigners to pay them for ALP work in the 2014 state election.
It is yet another reason not to vote ALP at the forthcoming state election.
Any decent premier of integrity would have resigned before now.
If only Dan the Dicktator knew the definition of the word “integrity” he would resign, I promise.
Lee
Perhaps you could point me to an example of a “decent premier of integrity” anywhere in Australia?
You’ve got me there, John!
LOL.
At least O’Farrell and Berejiklian in NSW resigned for far less.
How can corruption be “extraordinary”, “egregious”, “shocking”, “extensive” and known about by the man in charge and there is no recommendation for prosecution?
He’s right: Inquiry a protection racket for Andrews: Somyurek.
Andrews will treat it as run of the mill. It’s unlikely he will even feel defensive, given the extent to which his Government has installed its factional Daleks deeply into the public service and tossed money about in major projects and indulgent policy without any real purpose.
Falsies
It’s unlikely he will even feel defensive,
Far from feeling defensive, I suspect that he is proud of his “achievements”, and considers that what he has done is entirely justified by the results.
As I wrote in reply to a comment by Ed the other day, Andrews will never be charged (and quite possibly not even seriously investigated) by VicPol, at least while Labor is in government.
Hey, Dan Andrews: why not sue Davis for calling you a bank robber?
GO!
It’s not just Vicpol and the public service that he has in his pocket. Don’t forget the Office of Public Prosecutions and the bench.
All the decent premiers of integrity already have.
Whilst Andrews is an utter disgrace and should be up before the courts for this and many other reasons, watch the pissweak Lieborals hit him with a wet lettuce leaf. Viktoriastan is lost to the dark side.
I have a message for Matthew Guy, there are no enterprising journalists out there who are going to pony up and investigate what happened here. There will be no walkley on offer for any journo that touches this. You have to do it and shove it in their faces so hard they can’t ignore it.
Were there some mythical unicorn journalist, we would already know what happened when Andrews ‘fell down the stairs’
A man wiser than me said “Journalism is about covering important stories, with a pillow, till they stop moving”.
Like every scandal this government has ever experienced -too many to list- it will be made to quickly fade away by a very helpful media.
No charges, no police touching this with a ten foot pole, no consequences besides the continued loss of any belief in the Victorian legal system.
You can see how this plays out. He’s in total control. Of the Government, the public service, Vic Pol, the Media, the schools, the courts; In this green and socialist land, you actually can be arrested in your own kitchen, handcuffed while pregnant, for posting on social media.
Victoria, it’s all over bar the gulags.
Who remembers the Herald Sun(?) Piece about the vicpol officers wanted to charge sitting MPs with fraud over redshirts?
IBAC recommends no criminal charges my hairy arse. 😡
As Bolt said tonight, Andrews has already mounted his distraction campaign. “See – 2 years ago we fixed the branch stacking. I have already fixed the problem.”
No you haven’t Dan. Branch stacking was a minor issue. Rorting the taxpayer is the key issue. Only your resignation will get the real issue resolved.
SBS didn’t run this story until just on the halfway mark of their one hour evening bulletin, which is where the shove the stories they want to be able to say they showed, but don’t want anyone to see (because anybody watching turns over to the ABC then).
ABC at least ran this as their lead item while carefully insulating Andrews from any implication of guilt. No, it was all done by those wreckers and saboteurs, like Trotsky and Snowball. At least they didn’t insult me by adding their usual handy reminder, when reporting ALP branch stacking, that it isn’t actually illegal. Presumably there will not be one word about it tonight. But plenty of footage of those ‘London’ houses that apparently spontaneously burst into flames when the temperature hits 40. Funny how that never happens here.
IBAC will carefully avoid linking the nepotism and cronyism they found to the awarding of security contracts for hotel quarantine before the first covid outbreak.
7.30 was redhot on this last night with the retired judge saying people should vote against this government because of the findings.
He also pointed out the DPP can also direct charges against various people found to have caused an offence.
In the end it is up to the Opposition to make this the main issue at the forthcoming election. It is in November. That isn’t that far away.
If only the Fuhrer knew.
Dare I say: branch stacking doesn’t interest most people, who assume its just part of the dirty game of politics. Seems Dan Andrews is taking the Peter Beattie approach – apologise profusely, take (a kind of) responsibility and push forward saying it won’t happen again. I would expect this to succeed, and cause much gnashing of teeth here when Labor is re-elected in November.
Bingo. Beattie was the master of this gambit, once he realized you can claim ‘full responsibility’ for this sort of thing while incurring zero consequences.
The branch stacking is odious but everyone knows it pretty much happens everywhere, it’s the use of taxpayer funds to facilitate it that is the scandal.
True, except the amount involved was about $400,000 and repaid by the ALP.
On the other hand, Barnaby Joyce spent 3 weeks in total travelling the outback and
and all that was achieved was texts that presumably read something like “yeah, things are really crook out here with the drought.”
Things like that might explain why not that many heads are likely to explode in Victoria over this…
The opposition should be making a big thing about restoring confidence in the public institutions. For example they could promise to make the entire Police force re apply for their jobs. Promise to rid the force of the thugs and politically biased actors and get back to upholding the right.
The Victorian DPP (Ms Judd of Pell trial ignominy) put out a statement in 2018 saying there were no grounds for criminal charges over the Red Shirts affair. Her office is, if course, a political tool of the Andrews government, but in this case she may be right because, as Redlich points out, the relevant laws in Victoria are inadequate and leaky.
Barnaby Joyce’s travel expenses are somehow equivalent to embezzling taxpayer funds to stack branches. You do know how they do this, paying for peoples memberships or their time to attend specific events etc..
It’s bad enough when they use their own money, the only reason this won’t be an issue will be because the specifics are not laid out to the public.
In Andrew’s case it’s even worse, because he’s been trying to excise his factional opponents by accusing them of this, but it looks like it runs a bit deeper than that. Perhaps the reason his evidence was given in camera. That in itself is a reason to sack Andrews and dissolve an IBAC that is prepared to act in the interest of a compromised Premier.
Oh, how very convenient, but only after Labor was caught with their fingers in the public till.
That supposedly makes it all right then.
Somehow I don’t think bank robbers and extortionists would get off a jail sentence because: “I did/was going to pay all the money back”!
There will be no surprise or outrage as our political class on all sides have drummed into the electorate over and over that misuse of public funds is normal. No-one has any expectation other than that politicians will corruptly do whatever they can to get and stay elected whilst having all four feet like the little piggies they are, in the public trough.
People do not see the Libs as cleaner rather they see them as stupider and less adept at the political game and they are not wrong.
Our dear would be leader Matthew Guy has never satisfactorily explained his role in that planning debacle.It reeked of corruption but more it reeked of incompetence.
Therefore you would be happy for someone to come rob your house once a week, and on the times when you managed to catch them, you get back what they were lugging away, but they come back for more next week.
Sounds like a good deal huh?
The branch staking problem was fixed about 2 years ago. Remember that Andrews and Albo put the Victoriastan ALP branch into administration. Andrews and Albo, as far as I’m aware, still the sole administrators.
They don’t need to branch stack anymore because they’re calling the shots as the acting executive. A silent coup.
Note how the incumbent MP’s of the right faction, who haven’t quit, have pretty much all lost preselection for the November elections?
See? Problem fixed. Albo said so yesterday.
For any other class of citizen taking $400k of taxpayer funds that would mean that the culprits would still be charged, still be convicted but the sentence reduced.
Not so the political class. Ir more specifically, the Victorian ALP.