Mark Dreyfus has written to NSW police commissioner about the document used to attack Clover Moore

This article is more than 10 months old

This article is more than 10 months old

Shadow attorney-general Mark Dreyfus has formally asked New South Wales police to investigate how Angus Taylor’s office came to use a doctored document to justify a political attack on the Sydney mayor’s climate change stance.

Dreyfus wrote to NSW police commissioner Mick Fuller on Friday morning asking him to investigate the “highly concerning” revelations in the Guardian about the doctored document.

“According to that article, a report published in The Daily Telegraph on 30 September 2019 regarding travel expenditure by the City of Sydney Council was based on a forged version of the Council’s annual report,” Dreyfus wrote.

“That forgery, which dramatically overstated the Council’s annual travel costs, was allegedly provided to the newspaper by the office of the Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction, Mr Angus Taylor.”

“The false figures were also reportedly referred to in a letter sent by Mr Taylor to the Lord Mayor of Sydney, Ms Clover Moore.”

The letter asked Fuller to investigate whether someone had “made a false document with the intention” of inducing journalists at the Daily Telegraph to accept it as genuine for the purpose of influencing the “Lord Mayor of Sydney, Clover Moore, and other City of Sydney Councillors in the exercise of their public duties”.

Police have also been asked to examine whether an offence had been committed “on the basis that Mr Taylor or one or more individuals from Mr Taylor’s office” knew or believed an offence had been committed but failed to bring it to the attention of police.

In a statement on Friday afternoon, NSW police confirmed it had received the letter and was examining the matter.

“The matter has been referred to crime operations, state crime command, for assessment,” a spokeswoman said.

Taylor has flatly rejected the allegations and dismissed them as a “conspiracy theory”. The prime minister Scott Morrison has also ruled out referring the matter to police himself, after Labor gave the government 24 hours to act.

The Guardian first revealed on Wednesday the false figures were used by Taylor’s office to unleash a political attack on Moore last month.

Taylor claimed that Moore had increased carbon emissions by spending $15m on travel, a claim that was later backed up with a doctored council document provided to the Daily Telegraph, which the paper subsequently relied on to report the incorrect figure.

Taylor has denied any suggestions his office did anything other than download the document from the council’s website. The minister told parliament on Thursday that he was “advised” the document used was “drawn” from the council’s website and was “publicly available”.

Taylor has not provided evidence to the public to back up his claim. The City of Sydney has provided detailed evidence of its metadata and screenshots from the system used to manage its website showing the publicly available documents have not changed since they were first uploaded – with the correct and accurate figures – in November last year.

Moore issued a statement late on Thursday calling on the minister to follow the council’s lead and publicly release evidence of his office’s dealings with the document.

“We have provided conclusive metadata to prove our annual report documents have been available online, unchanged since November 2018,” Moore said.

“If the minister expects the public to believe his version of events, as implausible as they seem, it is incumbent on him to now provide evidence.”

On Friday, Moore’s office released a statement saying the council would cooperate with any potential police investigation.