*Mr O'Brien said he could not comment on the matter, as it was operational, but no adverse finding had been recorded on his police record following the investigation, adding he was cleared of the other allegations which had been made against him. The Crime and Corruption Commission overviewed the ethical standards branch findings and concurred with its result. A spokesman for the LNP executive said the party "was unaware that police had taken managerial action" and "the party had not seen the document, which would appear to be a confidential communication between police and the concerned party". Mr O'Brien resigned his position with the LNP state executive in April 2014 but remains a member of the LNP and has faced no further action from the party. Fairfax Media understands he is still heavily involved in LNP Wide Bay activities. Earlier, the spokesman for the party executive labelled Mr O'Brien a "well-regarded member of the LNP".

The spokesman for the LNP executive did not answer whether the party had directed Mr O'Brien to research the background of preselection candidates. Gympie LNP branch chair Ian Gordon resigned from the party on Saturday, accusing the executive of interfering with grassroots member's decisions and fostering a "bullying" culture within the branches. Mr Gibson confirmed to Fairfax Media that he had given a copy of the letter to Mr Gordon in his role as branch chair. Mr Gordon, who released the letter, said he was left with no choice but to resign from the party for what he called "immoral actions on behalf of the state executive. He had been a member of the party for 15 years and served as Gympie branch president for a year before resigning.

He accused the party executive of protecting "bullies" and interfering with branch business. "In Gympie specifically, there are 94 votes from memory, of which 14 of them were state executive," he said of the most recent pre-selection process. "I think that is over 11 per cent, that is enough to affect the outcome. And the same thing happened in Bruce Flegg's electorate of Moggill, they had even more people there voting against Bruce, one assumes they were voting against Bruce, so he didn't get in. "Now [party president] Bruce McIver has said on a number of occasions that the local members elect the candidate. Now that is not true, obviously. "They have too much of an input and it is branch stacking, basically.

"...It goes against everything that we stand for. As far as I am concerned, the local members elect their representative, not these faceless people of head office." Mr Gordon said the executive treated Mr O'Brien as a protected species and he was "terribly disappointed" with its response to both complaints regarding Mr O'Brien and its interference with branch politics. "I've completely given up," he said. "I was so disillusioned. The awful thing is, I have a lot of time for the parliamentary side, I think they are doing a great job, but the administrative side have lost the plot." An LNP spokesman said Mr Gordon had never made a formal complaint against Mr O'Brien.

"Mr O'Brien is also a respected member of the local police service and continues to serve his community in that role," he said. "The LNP is a proudly democratic party of 14,000 members in which local branch members choose their local candidates." * This story has been updated to include Mr O'Brien's comments, once he responded.