Red shirts scandal

The red shirts scandal was an Australian political scandal involving the Andrews Government of Victoria, Australia.

The scandal originated following a report by the Herald Sun that the Australian Labor Party had arranged for electorate officers for Victorian MPs to wear political attire ('red shirts') and campaign for the party in marginal seats during the 2014 Victorian state election. Although electorate officers are a type of political staffer, taxpayer funded electorate officers aren't allowed to campaign under Victorian parliamentary rules.

Electorate officers were paid for their campaigning partly through party funds, and partly through the taxpayer funded electorate officer budget. However, many were not required to perform any parliamentary staffer work; only performing campaign-related work. Some staffers involved questioned the legality of the scheme, but their concerns were ignored. Initial police investigations cleared the ALP of criminal activity.

Eventually, the then-Greens leader Greg Barber introduced a motion in the Victorian Legislative Council for the ombudsman Deborah Glass to investigate. The motion was successful, despite legal resistance by the Andrews government. The ombudsman report identified $388,000 in taxpayer money had been used in the scheme with 21 Labor MPs involved in the breach of rules. The ombudsman report resulted in an investigation by the Victorian Police's fraud squad. In August 2018 17 former field organisers were arrested by Victoria Police in relation to the scandal.

In November 2018 the Andrews Government was re-elected despite the scandal. The following year Victoria Police announced that the investigation would be closed without the laying of charges. The opposition leader Michael O'Brien called for the Victorian OPP to make public the legal advice resulting in their decision not to prosecute; but these calls were ignored. The ombudsman later criticised the decision to arrest staffers in 2018.

Reference to the red shirts scandal was made in discussing a somewhat separate but related political scandal a few years later; after it emerged that ALP members had used parliamentary resources to engage the stacking of ALP member branches. The use of parliamentary funds to stack branches emerged after a sting on the office of Adem Somyurek conducted by The Age. Follow-up investigations by IBAC concluded that parliamentary codes of conduct had been breached. Multiple ALP members and ministers left parliament as a result of this scandal.