Mark Dreyfus says timing of appointment to AAT of failed Liberal preselection candidate Jane Bell is ‘curious’

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Labor has asked the Australian federal police to investigate whether there was any electoral interference in the appointment of a failed Liberal preselection candidate to the administrative appeals tribunal.

The shadow attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, has written to the AFP commissioner, Andrew Colvin, about Jane Bell’s appointment to the AAT at the same time as she was seeking preselection for the Victorian seat of Higgins, made vacant by Kelly O’Dwyer’s retirement from federal politics.

Dreyfus questions whether Bell’s appointment was an attempt to have her “run dead” as a candidate in the race, in which Katie Allen eventually emerged victorious. But Porter’s office has dismissed Dreyfus’s move as a political stunt, claiming the attorney general, Christian Porter, would have needed “a crystal ball” for the interference claims to have merit.

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“Bottom line – the process of her appointment was done before Kelly [O’Dwyer] had resigned and so unless he had a crystal ball he couldn’t have known that and who would nominate anyway – and whether preselection is considered an election in the section Dreyfus is referencing is unlikely,” a spokesman for Porter said in a statement.

But Dreyfus remains unconvinced, writing to Colvin he believed the timing to be “curious”, given the case of Hollie Hughes, who lost her chance at a Senate seat after the high court ruled sitting on the AAT was a constitutional conflict.

“As attorney general and first law officer of this country, Mr Porter would have been well aware of this,” Dreyfus wrote in his letter to Colvin.

“The attorney general’s decision to appoint Ms Bell therefore raises a number of serious questions.

“In particular, it raises the question of whether the decision to appoint Ms Bell to the AAT was intended to influence her preselection campaign – or even her decision to seek preselection in the first place.

“As you are aware, giving or promising to give a person a benefit of any kind with the intention of influencing or affecting that person’s candidacy for an election may be a criminal offence under section 326 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918, punishable with up to two years in prison.

“Whether the giving – or promise – of a benefit does, in fact, influence or affect a person’s candidacy is not an element of that offence.”

Bell was one of 14 recent appointments to the AAT with connections to the Coalition, a move that brought accusations that the Coalition was attempting to stack the panel for political reasons.

Peter Dutton has complained that the tribunal, which reviews administrative decisions made by the government, is out of step with community standards in relation to its decisions to overturn his department’s visa cancellations.

It also examines appeals against robodebt and asylum applications.

The appointment of the former Western Australian state Liberal MP Joe Francis to the same tribunal also drew Porter unwanted attention, after it was revealed the party had agreed to purchase three campaign buses from a company Francis managed, shortly before the appointment was announced.