Labor has rejected Angus Taylor’s proffered explanation of how his office obtained a document with wildly inaccurate figures about Clover Moore’s travel expenses, saying that it vindicates their decision to refer the matter to police.

Taylor has admitted the figures were wrong and offered an apology to Moore, but maintains his office did not forge the Sydney City council document.

The shadow general, Mark Dreyfus, wrote to New South Wales police commissioner, Mick Fuller, on Friday morning asking him to investigate the revelations in the Guardian about the doctored document.

In a statement on Friday, Taylor claimed there was “clear evidence” that different versions of the same report existed online.

But he did not explain how the numbers came to be altered, and has not produced the metadata for the document he relied on, despite City of Sydney council providing its own.

On Saturday, Dreyfus and the shadow minister for climate and energy, Mark Butler, said Taylor’s statement “vindicates Labor’s decision to refer this matter to NSW police”.

“By his own admission, Angus Taylor has now confirmed the figures he provided to the Daily Telegraph were false,” Butler and Dreyfus said. “However, his attempts to dismiss his role in this desperate and irresponsible Liberal vendetta do not stand up to scrutiny.”

This week Guardian Australia revealed Taylor had relied on a doctored City of Sydney council document to accuse it of spending “$1.7m on international travel and $14.2m on domestic travel” for councillors. The true figures were $1,727.77 on international travel and $4,206.32 on domestic travel.

“There are no alternative versions of the report online,” Moore said. “At no time have the false figures appeared in the City of Sydney’s publicly available annual reports.”

Taylor’s office provided the Daily Telegraph with the false document, which was then used in a report which backed up his accusations that the lord mayor, Moore, was driving up carbon emissions with excessive travel.

Taylor said on Friday that formatting differences between the Word and PDF documents available for download proved there were different versions.

He told parliament his office had downloaded the report from the council website, prompting Dreyfus and Butler to question if he had misled parliament.

“The more Angus Taylor tries to cover up the abuse of his office the more weight he adds to Labor’s demands for a full investigation into his involvement in the peddling of these fabricated figures,” they said.

“Angus Taylor should now fully co-operate with NSW police and provide all of the documents he now has in his possession, reveal the source of these documents and explain how he came to provide fabricated figures about the City of Sydney budget.”

The Labor leader, Anthony Albanese, said on Saturday that he was “astounded” by Taylor’s lack of accountability over the use of the document.

“It is very clear that the document given to the Daily Telegraph was doctored,” Albanese told reporters in Sydney. “It is also very clear that Angus Taylor needs to explain where that document came from.”

Liberal Queensland senator Paul Scarr said political parties needed to reflect carefully before they referred matters to the police for investigation.

“There are things which I think properly remain in the political domain and things which should be referred to the police,” he told the ABC. “I think politicians of all political stripes need to consider that pretty carefully.”

Labor frontbencher Andrew Giles defended his party’s decision.

“The letter that Angus Taylor sent yesterday vindicates Labor’s decision to refer this to the police because it raises so many more questions than answers,” Giles told ABC television. “Why was Australia’s energy minister trying to get up a nasty story about the lord mayor of Sydney? Isn’t it odd that the energy minister would be spending all his time looking at the City of Sydney’s travel reports? I think he has other jobs to do.”

Taylor’s office was contacted for comment but they referred Guardian Australia back to Friday’s statement.