Yesterday had an ominous feeling for the government. Things tend to fall apart for it during parliamentary sitting weeks, and this was an estimates sitting week as well, multiplying the opportunities for things to go wrong. Add to that, there was the problem of a political raid on the Australian Workers Union, the result of an attempt by Michaelia Cash to get the new Registered Organisations Commission to pursue Bill Shorten over donations to GetUp over a decade ago when he headed the AWU.

Anthony Albanese had been out early yesterday saying “we know that Senator Cash’s office was ringing around media organisations yesterday afternoon, telling them that this was going to occur”. Who alerted the media to the raid was always going to be an issue of concern to Labor. The government even understood this — Cash met with Turnbull yesterday before Question Time to assure him she had not personally alerted the media (which no one had ever suggested, and which would be absurd — ministers have staff to do that sort of thing). Cash had also asked her office if anyone had told the media and, she says, been told they had not. The Cash staff member who did alert the media, David De Garis, was present at the meeting with the PM, but apparently said nothing to his minister or the Prime Minister to alert them to his actions or the fact that he had misled his minister.

Whether Turnbull was being cute in only asking Cash about her own actions and not those of her staff, or genuinely seemed to think a minister would personally pick up the phone to alert the media about an AFP raid, isn’t clear. But Labor duly pursued the issue in Question Time. 

“Given TV cameras turned up at the sites of AFP raids yesterday before even the Federal Police did, can the Prime Minister guarantee that his employment minister or her office didn’t notify anyone in the press gallery before the raid?” asked Tony Burke.

Turnbull’s answer should have worried the government. Rather than give a clear answer reflecting that he’d done the appropriate due diligence and checked with his minister, he said: “the employment minister is, I think, in estimates even as we speak, so I’m sure she will be dealing with that, but I can assure … Well, that can be addressed. But I can assure honourable members opposite that the real question here is: what happened to that $100,000?” As any fan of Yes, Minister know, when a politician says “the real question is”, they’re in trouble.

After Coalition senators had filibustered in the Education and Employment committee to prevent the Registered Organisations Committee from coming on before the 6pm news bulletins, Cash returned to the committee after dinner with a bombshell. Albanese — from whom Cash had earlier demanded an apology for impugning her — was right: her office had alerted the media to the raids ahead of time. De Garis had presented during dinner to say what he should have said in the meeting with the PM many hours earlier: he’d made sure the media was present for the raid. De Garis had resigned, as he necessarily should have, for misleading his minister.

But that wasn’t the only bombshell. The head of the ROC, Mark Bielecki, had repeatedly insisted that the raid was necessitated by the failure of the AWU to cooperate with the ROC in furnishing documents relating to the donation. Then, at 10.40 last night, Bielecki abruptly reversed himself and blew away a rationale for the raid.

“can I just go back to an answer I gave you previously when I said that not all notices to produce had been fulfilled by the AWU? That’s not correct. I got them confused with a different registered organisation. So, I withdraw that answer.”

So the only remaining rationale for the raid was an anonymous tip-off that the AWU was destroying documents — documents that had already been furnished to the Trade Union Royal Commission some years ago.

The sacrifice of De Garis, however, was evidently not sufficient. Where had De Garis gotten the information about the raids? Who had leaked to the leaker? Was it someone at the ROC? Cash told Estimates first thing this morning that she’d written overnight to Bielecki asking that the issue be investigated, possibly by the AFP. So, Cash wants the AFP to investigate the AFP’s raid on the AWU.

What had Bielecki done this morning about the leak? Nothing much so far, he told estimates. And certainly not called the AFP. Long-term observers of leaking will notice yet again the contrast in the urgency of investigations into leaks that embarrass governments, and the strange sloth that attends determining who leaked in a way that serves the government’s agenda.

As it turns out, this raid is serving no one’s interests but Bill Shorten’s. And it’s not over yet.