Election fraud rocks Australia's Labor Party

December 2, 2000
Web posted at: 8:12 AM HKT (0012 GMT)

SYDNEY, Australia (Reuters) -- Election fraud threatens to topple an Australian state Labor government and spread to national politics where it could severely damage the opposition Australian Labor Party ahead of a 2001 election.

Wayne Swan, one of Labor's most promising national figures on Friday said he would voluntarily withdraw from his political responsibilities while police investigated a cash payment made to an opposition party at the 1996 election.

"I have advised the (party) leader that I am stepping aside from my shadow ministerial responsibilities until this matter is resolved," Swan said in a statement.

The Labor government in the state of Queensland is clinging to power after having lost its one-seat majority on Thursday after two MPs admitted electoral fraud and one quit.

The politicians, who included the state deputy premier, falsely enrolled people including family members for more than a decade to win party pre-selection and state elections, a Queensland criminal justice commission inquiry heard this week.

"I didn't realize it was going to get this bad," Queensland Labor premier Peter Beattie said on Friday.

"I am determined to clean up the party," said Beattie after sacking a senior adviser over electoral irregularities and referring the case to police on Friday.

The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper reported on Friday that a "slush fund" used to pay for fraudulent Labor party membership in Queensland in the early 1990s was run out of a national Labor politician's office, but the politician knew nothing of the fund.

National Labor frontbench politician Wayne Swan told parliament on Tuesday he had made a cash payment to an opposition party in Queensland during the 1996 national election campaign.

Swan said he arranged for a bag with a donation to be handed to the Democrat party in his constituency, but denied it was for votes. He did not say how much money was involved or why he made the donation.

The Australian Electoral Commission referred Swan's case to police on Friday. The Director of Public Prosecutions will decide if Swan should face criminal charges after the police report.

"Mr Swan has stood aside because even though he is absolutely entitled to the presumption of innocence...it is essential that the Labor party demonstrate its complete commitment to the highest standards of probity," said national Labor leader Kim Beazley, promising to stamp out electoral fraud in his party.

An independent candidate in a Victorian state by-election in 1998 said on Thursday Labor had previously offered him money for votes.

The Queensland inquiry will deliver its report on electoral fraud in early in 2001. It has heard Labor politicians created "ghost residents," enrolling people in electorates through fake addresses, so they could vote in the district.

Conservative Prime Minister John Howard has already sniffed Labor's electoral wound and unleashed some of his senior ministers on the national Labor opposition.

In an unprecedented move the Australian Labor Party walked out of the national parliament on Thursday after a government attack implied a senior Labor member was involved in bribes.

Beattie said the fraud scandal was not good for national Labor leader Kim Beazley.

"It is a test of my leadership...it is also a test of the Kim Beazley leadership," he said.

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