The Australian federal police has conducted raids on the Victorian and national headquarters of the Australian Workers’ Union in response to concerns that key documents were being concealed or destroyed.



Officers arrived at the Sydney and Melbourne offices of the union on Tuesday afternoon and an AFP spokeswoman confirmed officers had executed search warrants at both locations.

The searches relate to an investigation being conducted by the Registered Organisations Commission into whether donations made to the activist group GetUp by the AWU in 2005 were authorised under the union’s rules.

Last month the employment minister, Michaelia Cash, referred GetUp funding to the Registered Organisations Commission (ROC) after reports by News Corp that the AWU had donated large sums of money to GetUp in 2005 when Bill Shorten was the union’s secretary.

Shorten was also a founding member of the GetUp board.

The Registered Organisations Commission, a new watchdog for unions and employer groups, was set up in response to the Heydon royal commission into union governance and corruption.

The commission issued a statement on Tuesday evening saying that, since its investigation commenced, it had been given information which raised “reasonable grounds” to suspect documents relevant to the inquiry may be being interfered with – either concealed or destroyed.

It said that information had been put to a magistrate and warrants had been issued allowing police to enter offices in Sydney and Melbourne and seize documents related to the ROC’s investigation.

The commission said it was an offence for a person to engage in conduct “that results in the concealment, destruction or alteration of a document relating to an investigation being conducted, or about to be investigated by the ROC”.

While a government spokesman said it was “absurd and false” to suggest the AFP was politicised, or subject to any direction, given the agency was independent of government, both the ALP and the AWU were quick to claim the raids were politically motivated.

The AWU secretary, Daniel Walton, called it an “extraordinary abuse of police resources and taxpayer funds by a desperate government”.

“It is clear the Roc has been established not to promote good governance but to use taxpayer and police resources to muckrake through historic documents in an attempt to find anything that might smear a future Labor PM,” he said.

In a press conference in Melbourne on Tuesday evening, he said the union’s lawyers would raise its concerns about the process with the Victorian magistrates court. He said the union “fully supports” the GetUp donations and that the donations were endorsed by the union at the time.

“The AWU executives approves donations [and] had a discussion at the time in relation to a donation to GetUp,” he said.

He said that in 2005 GetUp was a “new political organisation that was going to pursue our members’ interests”.

“We were supportive of it then [and] we’re supportive of it now,” he said.

He questioned why “the AFP is raiding a union office to search for historic minutes from over 10 years ago”.

Walton was joined at the press conference by the head of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, Sally McManus who called the raids a “shocking attack on democracy”.

Labor’s workplace relations spokesman, Brendan O’Connor, accused the government of a “witch hunt”, and claimed the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, was “entirely responsible for this turn of events”, calling it an “alarming misuse of ministerial power”.

O’Connor accused Turnbull of engaging in a pattern of behaviour of using police and regulators for political purposes, including calling them to investigate leaks about the national broadband network and Labor text messages about Medicare before the 2016 election.

O’Connor claimed the allegations about the AWU were a “civil matter at best”, describing it as “unusual” that a crime fighting agency would execute a warrant as authorised officers of a civil regulator.



A government spokesman then rounded on Labor, declaring the opposition was “attacking the independence, integrity and professionalism of the AFP and its officers”.

“This is an offensive slur and a disgraceful distraction,” the spokesman said, adding the matter ought to be investigated “without hysterical smears from Labor”.

The police raids followed a confrontation between Labor and the government in question time, with the ALP highlighting a report by the ABC claiming that police operations in Sydney, including drug busts, had been imperilled by increased security needs, including at the prime minister’s personal residence in Sydney.

The ABC report drew on a leaked internal memo that suggested federal police operations in Sydney did not have the sufficient resources to meet operational load.

The government said the AFP’s positive record in criminal investigations spoke for itself.

“We have given record funding in the last budget to the AFP,” Turnbull told parliament. “We provide them with the resources they need to keep us safe.”

The AFP issued a statement on Tuesday saying the leak to the ABC was now subject to a professional standards investigation.

The Liberal party senator Eric Abetz, who also referred the News Corp reports to the Roc, welcomed Tuesday’s raids.

“I am pleased that finally issues relating to potential trade union corruption are being taken seriously and thoroughly investigated,” he said. “Honest union members have the right to know that their money is being spent correctly.

“If the funding provided to GetUp as a part of its start-up funding, which also then saw the then national secretary of the AWU put on GetUp’s board, was inappropriate, it raises some very serious questions.”