Labor campaigners and a senior party official have met taxpayer-funded electorate staff during work hours to discuss the campaign strategy for the upcoming state election in a potential breach of strict laws introduced three years ago.

Victorian Labor assistant secretary Nicola Castleman met government MPs and some electorate officers at Parliament House during the first parliamentary sitting week of this month to discuss Labor’s election strategy, according to a well-informed source at parliament who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.

Daniel Andrews’ campaign is kicking off with briefings to MPs on the marginal seats strategy.Credit:Wayne Taylor

The Age has sighted further evidence that field organisers, who train and manage the army of Labor volunteers who will doorknock and telephone voters in the lead-up to the November 26 poll, have also met MPs and their electorate staffers in electorate offices during work hours over the past few weeks to discuss the party’s election campaign strategy. The Age is unable to disclose that evidence to protect the identity of whistleblowers.

Castleman was involved in the “Community Action Network” in 2014, in which Labor field organisers, partly funded by taxpayers, were trained to campaign for the re-election of MPs in what later became known as the “red shirts” affair.

In the wake of that affair, which caused Labor to apologise and pay back $388,000, the government passed laws in March 2019 to ban electorate office staff, who are paid by the taxpayer, from campaign work. The law did not ban them from party political work more broadly.

A spokesperson for the government said The Age had “refused to provide evidence to substantiate these claims beyond anonymous allegations”, adding that “all Members of Parliament who attended the meetings in question have confirmed that no staff were present”. The Labor Party was contacted for comment.

Labor is still troubled by the the red shirts affair from 2014Credit:Scott Barbour

The recent meetings come as integrity looms as a key issue at the November state election. Labor came under serious criticism for a rotten internal culture in an Ombudsman and anti-corruption commission investigation in Operation Watts released last month. After that report, Labor committed to crack down further on MPs misusing electorate staff.

Under the 2019 law, electorate staff are prohibited from doing campaign work in office hours. They are also not allowed to direct how a person should vote at an election by promoting a political party or the election of any candidate.

But in the recent meetings, a well-informed senior Labor Party source said the discussion was about the forthcoming election campaign. Electorate officers were told during work hours that Labor volunteers would support the MPs’ re-election, and they were offered a detailed account of how ALP headquarters would campaign over the next three months to secure the Andrews government a third term in office. Field organisers also went through the campaign plans with electorate office staff.

A leaked document from the Labor Party, seen by The Age, is entitled “FO [field organisers] guide: Victorian state election field program”. It says Labor’s field organisers will “sit down with MPs and EO [electorate office] staff”, attend branch meetings and meet past volunteers.

The document also lays out a grassroots strategy that will be at the heart of the party’s 2022 campaign to “mobilise Labor supporters in their local area to do their bit to re-elect an Andrews Labor government on November 26th 2022”.

“The Victorian state election organising strategy is designed to build a large activist base organised into local Community Action Networks, led by volunteer leaders, and mobilised to targeted direct voter contact activities in the final weeks of the Victorian state election,” according to the document.

The Age has confirmed that, since the work-hours meetings took place, parliamentarians and Labor Party headquarters have told the campaigners that future weekly catch-up meetings should take place after 5pm.

The Centre for Public Integrity’s research director, Dr Catherine Williams, said the Ombudsman and IBAC Commissioner had been unequivocal in the recent Operation Watts report into branch stacking, which condemned political parties for misusing public funds for campaigning, including the salaries of paid electorate office staff.

A Labor supporter wears the “red shirt” for Daniel Andrews’ election in 2014.Credit:Scott Barbour

“It’s very difficult to see how meetings about an election campaign could be construed as anything other than an activity for the dominant purpose of promoting the election of a candidate or the Labor Party more broadly,” Williams said. “These allegations, if true, highlight precisely why the reforms our oversight agencies have called for must be progressed as a matter of urgency.”

However, Monash University politics lecturer Dr Zareh Ghazarian said the latest controversy highlighted the problem with banning electorate officers, who are inherently political and interested in getting their member re-elected, from doing any campaign work.

“Electorate officers are only there for supporting constituents and local MPs doing their local duties. It raises questions as to how there can be that clean break between the organisational wings of parties and those elected to office, and those who are employed as electorate officers on taxpayers’ money,” Ghazarian said.

However, he said the revelations did not reflect well on politicians.

The news come just a month after the government pilloried Opposition Leader Matthew Guy over reports in The Age Guy’s former chief of staff Mitch Catlin requested billionaire Liberal donor Jonathan Munz to make more than $100,000 in payments to his private marketing business, in addition to his taxpayer-funded salary.

In the red-shirts rort, Labor hired casual electorate officers to campaign for the party in marginal seats. The party paid 60 per cent of their salaries, and 40 per cent came from the taxpayer-funded electorate office budget. Many told Ombudsman Deborah Glass they were expected to mainly do campaign-related work. Glass at the time described the scheme as an “artifice” and “wrong”.

The Operation Watts report called out Labor’s culture and a “legislative framework that provides few, if any, consequences for abusing public resources … Despite the 2019 amendments after the Red Shirts report, Victoria is now a laggard rather than a leader in parliamentary integrity”.

The joint two-year investigation centred on the behaviour of former Labor ministers Adem Somyurek and Marlene Kairouz who misused their staff’s time for factional activities such as branch stacking.

“The Ombudsman’s ‘Red Shirts’ report highlighted the need for reform in 2018 – both to prevent public funds being used for party-political purposes and to empower an independent agency to investigate when allegations are made. The response was tepid, and this report highlights how little has changed.”

Premier Daniel Andrews last month committed to implementing all 21 recommendations of the Operation Watts report, including a review of the code of conduct for electorate officers to “specifically prohibit party-specific work from being undertaken during the course of an electorate officer’s employment”.

Another recommendation was to require the Department of Parliamentary Services to review the position description for new electorate officers by including “an explicit statement prohibiting the successful applicant from engaging in party-specific” activities.

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