The Victorian ALP Leader of the Opposition, Daniel Andrews, has denied involvement in a dirty tricks incident concerning a tape recorder lost by a newspaper journalist.
Andrews spoke in an interview today with the 3AW morning host, Neil Mitchell.
The recorder contained an off-the-record interview the former Premier, Ted Baillieu, gave to Farrah Tomazin of The Age. The interview came to light several weeks ago. Baillieu criticised a range of conservative Liberal Party figures in the interview. The interview was circulated inside the Liberal Party by unknown Liberals who are believed to be hostile to Baillieu.
Over the past week, it has become known that Tomazin’s tape recorder was lost at the ALP State Conference earlier this year. It was handed in to ALP workers at the conference. Some days later, the tape was listened to and then copied by Kosmos Samaras, the Assistant State Secretary of the ALP.
In the interview with Mitchell, Andrews says the recorder included a tape of an interview with Samaras, who maintains that he did not give permission for his remarks to be recorded. Andrews said discussions then took place with his Chief of Staff, John McLindon, and the ALP State Secretary, Noah Carroll, who both listened to the tape.
Andrews says Samaras made an error of judgement in then deciding to destroy the tape recorder and the copied recordings.
Andrews says he has no idea how the recordings made their way into the hands of Liberal Party operatives. He denies that his staff had anything to do with it.
- Watch Part 1 of the Daniel Andrews interview with Neil Mitchell (8m)
- Watch Part 2 of the interview (9m)
