The AWU has issued Federal Court subpoenas to produce documents and give evidence to four people: Cash, De Garis, former Fair Work Ombudsman media officer Mark Lee and ROC official Chris Enright.

To date, Cash has not challenged the subpoenas but has publicly indicated that she has instructed her taxpayer funded lawyers to do so.

Cash has changed ministerial portfolios twice since the raids and has had a high turnover of staff from her office. The AWU wants to issue one additional subpoena to Cash's former chief of staff Ben Davies, but can't find him.

"Despite their best efforts these private investigators have actually been unable to locate ... Ben Davies," Walton said.

The AWU's Federal Court case into the legitimacy of the raids has been delayed until the AFP's investigation into the "unauthorised disclosure of government information" is complete. It is currently slated for trial in February 2019.

Walton said the union is frustrated by the ongoing delays, but will persist.

"We respect the work of the AFP, but the lack of resources allocated to their investigation, and the subsequent delays, have been disappointing," he said.

The AFP told Senate Estimates on Monday that the investigation is not officially complete, but that it has provided a full brief of evidence to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions.



Internal AFP documents published by BuzzFeed News revealed the leak investigation was given the same priority as the investigation into the "liking" of a porn tweet by minister Greg Hunt's Twitter account. That six month investigation found the minister's account was not hacked.

Walton said the "heavy-handed" October 24 raids has left AWU staff distressed and upset. He says it will be remembered as a "notorious day in Australian political history".

"They were a bit of cooked-up theatre that you would expect in a tinpot dictatorship," Walton said.



"Rarely has an Australian government so brazenly abused its power to harass and menace its political opponents. To use the limited resources of the Australian Federal Police to raid a union office in pursuit of decade-old paperwork relating to a publicly declared donation – without the slightest suspicion of criminal activity – is wrong, plain and simple."

At the time of publishing, Cash's office had not responded to BuzzFeed News questions about Davies, and whether she has been in contact with him recently.