SYDNEY – Australian police on Thursday searched an office belonging to the opposition Labor Party and the offices of a shadow minister over a suspected leak of information about the country’s broadband upgrade, an MP and media said.
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Mr Turnbull said he had no prior notice of the raids and chastised Labor for questioning the integrity of the police.
“I have had no interaction with the AFP during their investigation”.
But Mr Turnbull twice refused to say whether anyone in his office had contact with NBN Co about the leaks.
“Australians are distinctly and deeply unimpressed that this government and Malcolm Turnbull will go to such lengths to hide the truth from Australians”, Mr Shorten said.
He denied instructing or requesting NBN to bring in the AFP to investigate the series of damaging documents, which detailed problems with the government’s multi-technology mix national broadband network.
But Mr Turnbull remains the preferred prime minister by 46 per cent to Mr Shorten’s 31 per cent.
In a statement on Friday, NBN said staff had “followed and complied with instructions from the AFP at all times”.
“This investigation has been undertaken independent of government, and decisions regarding yesterday’s activity were made by the AFP alone”, police said in the statement.
“As an AFP investigation was underway, I did not advise other ministers or the prime minister of this matter”.
The Labor party has criticised the “unprecedented” raids as being politically motivated given they came amidst the federal election campaign and six months after the matter was first referred to the AFP.
“Nor did I have any knowledge of, nor involvement in, matters that occurred this week”.
“It is inconceivable that Mitch Fifield and his office, who knew about these leaks and knew about the likelihood or the reality of an AFP investigation, did not tell someone in the prime minister’s office”, Wong said on Saturday.
“It is either gross incompetence or indeed it far worse, and we are not being told the truth”.
The AFP officers were accompanied in the raids by an NBN staffer who assisted in identifying documents of relevance.
Labor has claimed parliamentary privilege over the documents, some of which were seized from Senator Stephen Conroy’s office.
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“No wonder NBN Co wants to silence these whistleblowers”.
