This article is more than 7 months old

This article is more than 7 months old

Labor has asked the Australian electoral commission to investigate why the Liberal party declared and then removed a $165,000 donation from the company of a Scott Morrison ally and key bidder for a $1bn government contract.

The Liberals are still refusing to explain how they could have mistakenly declared a $165,000 donation from Southern Strategy, a company linked to Liberal heavyweight Scott Briggs. Briggs is leading a consortium of companies hoping to win the massive contract to privatise Australia’s visa processing system.

The donation appeared in the Liberal party’s original disclosures to the AEC, but was removed after it was queried by the Guardian on Wednesday. Briggs said he’d never made the donation and the Liberals said it was a mistake.

Liberal party claims declaration of a $165k donation by Morrison ally was a mistake Read more

The shadow assistant immigration minister, Andrew Giles, said it was “entirely unclear” how the Liberals could have accidentally declared a donation – complete with details of the company, its address and a specific amount – if it did not occur.

Giles wrote to the AEC and asked it to urgently investigate the matter.

“In the interests of transparency and accountability, it’s imperative that this matter be properly examined,” he said.

“I ask that you investigate this issue as a matter of urgency to ensure that all disclosure requirements have been met.”

Briggs has denied ever having made the Southern Strategy donation and left it to the Liberal party to explain how it came to wrongly declare the $165,000 donation.

“All I can confirm is that Southern Strategy made no donations to the Liberal party,” he said this week.

Guardian Australia again approached the Liberals for an explanation on Thursday. A spokesman said only that Southern Strategy had not made a donation to the Liberal party “either directly or in-kind” and that the the party was amending its return to “correct the error”. That casts doubt on any possibility that Southern Strategy had provided some kind of gift “in-kind” – including free work or services – to the Liberal party.

Labor has previously raised concerns about possible conflicts of interest in the tender process for the $1bn visa privatisation contract. The government intends to privatise its visa processing system to streamline and save costs, a plan critics fear will cost public service jobs, pose a risk to sensitive personal data, and put power over visa decisions into the hands of private companies.

The Community and Public Sector Union national secretary, Melissa Donnelly, said the visa privatisation must be stopped and the donations ought to be investigated.

“A wide range of organisations across the nation are coming together and calling on the government to ditch this plan, all concerned with the massive risks involved; cost of visas, worker exploitation, economic impact, data security breaches and national security concerns,” Donnelly said. “Visa privatisation is a friendless plan.”

A consortium named Australian Visa Processing Pty Ltd – which involves Briggs and his investment firm Pacific Blue Capital – is one of two reported frontrunners for the contract.

Briggs is also a close ally of Morrison’s, a former colleague of immigration minister David Coleman, and a state deputy director of the NSW Liberal party.

In its declaration to the AEC, the Liberals listed the address of Southern Strategy as the same George Street office as Australian Visa Processing and Pacific Blue Capital.