The state ombudsman has made adverse findings against Western Victoria MP Gayle Tierney in the wake of the ‘rorts for votes’ scandal.
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Ombudsman Deborah Glass released a report on Wednesday morning from an investigation into the Labor party rerouting electorate staff budgets.
Whistleblowers had alleged money from safe upper house seats had gone towards political campaign staff in key marginal areas during the 2014 state election.
The report stated taxpayer funds for ‘electorate officers’ - staff in MPs’ offices that handle organising events, communications and contact with constituents – were instead diverted to ‘field organisers’.
The ‘field organisers’ were deployed to campaign for Labor in battleground seats, mainly around Melbourne and Geelong.
Ms Glass found Ms Tierney’s office contributed more than $20,000 to an effort that resulted in $388,000 of taxpayers’ money spent on ‘field organisers' for election campaigns.
Shortly after the report was released, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said the money had been repaid, but he did not apologise.
“In her observations, the ombudsman notes that the Members of Parliament involved in the staff pooling arrangements acted in good faith and derived little or no personal benefit from the use of parliamentary funds in this way,” Mr Andrews said.
“She makes no recommendations that action be taken against anyone involved in these arrangements.”
Opposition police spokesperson Edward O'Donohue said it was time for Ms Tierney to step down to be removed from her role as Corrections Minister.
“It beggars belief that the minister responsible for corrections can be found to have been involved in the rorting of taxpayers’ money,” Mr O'Donohue said.
“As the Ombudsman found on page four: ‘The arrangement to employ field organisers as electorate officers was an artifice to secure partial payment for the campaign out of parliamentary funds, and was wrong’.”
The ombudsman’s report stated that “the purpose of the field organisers’ work was to win government for the ALP in the 58th Parliament, rather than to perform activities or representative responsibilities relevant to their nominating Members’ roles in the 57th Parliament,”
The paid field organisers helped manage unpaid volunteers through Labor’s ‘Community Action Network’, who were highly visible during the 2014 campaign due to their red t-shirts.
The ombudsman found Ms Tierney breached Clause 8 of the Members of Parliament guide that requires members to certify that funds have been used for parliamentary or electorate purposes.
The ombudsman did not find Ms Tierney breached clauses around maximum staff levels, unlike some of her senior ministerial colleagues.
Ms Tierney told the ombudsman she was not aware of her Electorate Officer Marcus Feaver using his taxpayer-funded work days to attend political campaign training as a field organiser, despite certifying his time sheets for those days.
“In a statutory declaration, field organiser Marcus Feaver stated that he worked from a number of locations during his employment as an electorate officer and field organiser in 2014, including the electorate office of his nominating member, the Hon Gayle Tierney MLC,” the ombudsman’s report stated.
“Mr Feaver stated that Ms Tierney had insisted that he perform electorate officer work on days claimed in time-sheets submitted by DPS.
“Mr Feaver stated that ‘from the outset’, Ms Tierney made it clear to him that he was to divide his time ‘between doing electorate officer work in her office and doing field organiser work’ for the ALP candidate’s campaign in South Barwon District.
“Mr Feaver stated that he performed the role of a field organiser when he was not working for Ms Tierney. Mr Feaver added that, as the South Barwon electorate was her ‘duty seat’, Ms Tierney took a ‘particular interest in issues arising in that electorate and the success of Mr Richards’ campaign’.
“Andy Richards was the non-sitting ALP candidate for South Barwon District at the 2014 state election.”
Mr Richards was defeated in the 2014 election by Liberal Andrew Katos by a two-party-preferred margin of 5.72 per cent.
Evidence provided to the ombudsman by both Ms Tierney and Mr Feaver indicate that Mr Feaver did some work as an Electorate Officer for Ms Tierney during 2014.
Ms Tierney’s electorate office is 3.8 kilometres away from Belmont, the population centre of South Barwon District.
Ms Tierney’s electorate of Western Victoria region covers most of the west of the state, with most of its regional centres being multiple hours away from South Barwon by road.
Mr Feaver told the ombudsman that he would “often start a day working in Ms Tierney’s electorate office as an electorate officer, before working as a field organiser in the afternoons”.
When not working on electorate business for Western Victoria, Mr Feaver would spend about 8.5 hours on a week day meeting with election campaign staff, training volunteers, managing campaign data, and recruiting volunteers by phone.
On weekends, Mr Feaver would spend nine hours distributing campaign material, in calls with the Victorian elelction campaign to discuss “critical goals”, recruiting volunteers and managing day-to-day issues and housekeeping for the campaign.
In total, Mr Feaver spent 68 days working on election campaigns under the scheme.
Ms Tierney presided over one of the highest levels of reallocated staff spending out of 22 MPs that were mentioned in the report.
In a statutory declaration, Ms Tierney told the ombudsman that she expected Mr Feaver would “perform a range of electorate officer duties for me on the days he worked in my office”.
“She recalled John Lenders explaining that Mr Feaver would also be employed as a field organiser but did not recall what he said about preparing the required paperwork or when this conversation took place,” the ombudsman’s report stated.
“Ms Tierney did not recall receiving Department of Parliamentary Services documents for Mr Feaver, including receiving or signing his time-sheets, but said that she expected that she did so.
“She stated that Mr Feaver worked in her electorate office two days per week, subject to some flexibility ‘in order to meet his other obligations’.
“She said that during his employment as an electorate officer, Mr Feaver’s duties included assisting with drafting letters and speeches, conducting research and representing her at community meetings.”
In support of her statement, Ms Tierney provided a number of emails, and documents which she stated Mr Feaver had prepared for her, including draft second reading speeches, letters to newspaper editors, Member’s statements and meeting notes.
“Of these materials, only two emails referred to Mr Feaver’s work as an electorate officer. These emails showed that Ms Tierney directed Mr Feaver to represent her at a community meeting held on Sunday, 20 April 2014 and to attend a public rally on Sunday, 10 August 2014,” the ombudsman’s report stated.
“The remaining documents provided by Ms Tierney did not identify Mr Feaver, or any other person, as their author.
“On 16 January 2018, investigators requested further information about how the delineation in Mr Feaver’s electorate officer and field organiser roles was observed, but this was not provided.”
The ombudsman did not make adverse findings against Western Victoria Labor MP Jaala Pulford, whose electorate office is in Ballarat, but the report did note Ms Pulford’s statements to parliament on the matter.