Dan Andrews under fire as former IBAC commissioner makes misconduct allegations

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• By Avi Yemini

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Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews is in damage control after extraordinary allegations of misconduct were made against government MPs by the former IBAC commissioner Robert Redlich.

The allegations were contained in a letter sent to the parliament’s presiding officers in December, but never released to MPs.

Contents of the letter only became known this week after the Herald Sun newspaper published a copy.

The letter included claims that government MPs had instructed an independent consultant to “dig up dirt” on the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission after it had conducting multiple probes into the Andrews administration.

Andrews yesterday denied the allegations – made by Redlich as he finished his five-year term on the commission - as “simply wrong”.

Andrews also insisted that he had never seen the letter.

He claimed his office might have been aware of the letter, but that he didn’t know about it.

“I’m not having a debate with a bloke who used to run an agency who’s apparently written a letter that I haven’t seen,” Andrews said.

Opposition Leader John Pesutto moved to suspend debate on the government’s Heritage Amendment Bill so that parliament should instead debate the non-receipt of Mr Redlich’s letter by MPs.

He accused the government of trying to arrange a “political hit job” on IBAC and of hiding the letter containing the allegations which was meant to be seen by all MPs.

Andrews said: “I’ve got no announcements to make about claims made by someone, the nature of which the details of which I haven’t even seen.

“It was of such grave seriousness, and it was such an important matter for me to take action on (but) it wasn’t sent to me”.