Following federal Labor’s successful election campaign,in which Nelson was reportedly involved in a strategy and advertising capacity,the firm has also opened an office in Canberra and even poached Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles’former long-time chief of staff.
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Separately on Monday,the CCC released a public report into itsOperation Workshop investigation,citing a need to “correct the confusion and misinformation” around matters raised by Stepanov,media reporting and the LNP Opposition.
After allegations of leaks from the Integrity Commissioner’s office and potentially problematic behaviour from the Public Service Commission,the CCC found that the laptops in question had been retrieved in “entirely ordinary” circumstances following staffing changes.
Suggestions some data had been improperly access or leaked from the office stemmed from a handover between a departing executive officer who had been “struggling to keep up with the workload” and had taken to copying emails to a separate official email address to manage.
She left in November 2020 and later raised a bullying complaint,the subject of ongoing work by the Public Service Commission,about how she was treated by Stepanov and a director seconded to the office from the PSC.
The director was reassigned to a position outside the integrity office in March of 2021. The two laptops were then “collected” for,respectively,the ongoing investigation and to provide to a replacement staff member — the latter also requiring the laptop to be cleared after backing up in a process the CCC described as “wholly unremarkable”.
Stepanov and another staff member stayed away on that day to avoid contact with the director who was set to,but in the end did not,also collect their personal belongings. The CCC said there was “differing recollections” about who suggested the plan,but it had not been a direction.
“In light of the above conclusions,the CCC considered a public report was appropriate so as to provide an accurate picture of what the evidence suggests actually occurred,” the report said. “A failure to correct the confusion and misinformation around these events may continue to erode public confidence.”
Fentiman excoriated the LNP Opposition after the report’s release,after the party had for months claimed the situation was at the centre of an “integrity inferno” dogging the government and demanded to know what was “on the laptop”.
In a statement,the LNP’s integrity spokeswoman Fiona Simpson said the report “creates more questions than answers”.
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