2016-08-24
The Australian Greens are deeply troubled by the AFP raids inside Parliament House today and have called on NBN management to simply come clean on whatever it is they are trying to hide.
“It is no secret that the NBN build is in deep trouble, with flawed political decisions by the Abbott/Turnbull Government leading to inevitable cost and time overruns and the selection of substandard technology for what should have been a world-class project,” Greens deputy and communications spokesperson Senator Scott Ludlam said.
“Instead of getting its house in order, NBN has escalated to a more extreme and high-risk strategy of invoking Federal Police raids on political staffers and now on the grounds of Parliament itself.”
“A century of practice of parliamentary privilege has evolved to protect legislators and their advisers from actions of the police when they find themselves in possession of documents provided by public interest whistle blowers. Today’s precedent is troubling in the extreme.”