Questions blocked on red shirts rort

THE Labor chairwoman of a parliamentary inquiry probing Victoria’s anti-corruption agencies has been accused of running a protection racket for the government after blocking questions over the infamous red shirts election rort.

Harriet Shing on Monday stopped a line of questioning about the affair when Ombudsman Deborah Glass appeared before the integrity and oversight committee’s inquiry into the treatment of witnesses by anti-corruption agencies.

Despite Ms Glass’ red shirts report being released in 2018, Ms Shing repeatedly prevented opposition MPs asking her about the investigation because she said it was “the subject of an unresolved investigation by another integrity agency”.

She last week repeatedly prevented Independent Broadbased Anti-corruption Commission head Robert Redlich from discussing “individual matters” when giving evidence about treatment of IBAC witnesses.

At one point, when questions were raised about why IBAC agreed to grill Premier Daniel Andrews in private hearings, when others were public, Ms Shing asked for the hearing’s live feed to be cut. Once back, she reminded committee members to not mention “individual matters”.

She also later stopped the inquiry from hearing about the ongoing public examination of factional branch stacking in the Labor Party.

Opposition spokesman David Davis accused the government of a cover-up.

“Labor refused to cooperate with the Ombudsman or the police on their theft of taxpayers’ money (paying electorate officers for electioneering), fighting all the way to the High Court,” Mr Davis said. “Now Labor’s committee chair has continued to block scrutiny in an outrageous cover-up.”