Everything We Know About Last Night's Police Raid of a Labor Party Office

The AFP raided the Melbourne office of Labor politician Stephen Conroy late Thursday night, investigating a leak of confidential documents from the National Broadband Network (nbn co).

The Brunswick home of a Labor staffer was also searched, with officers entering the property around 11 PM and remaining there until the early hours on Friday morning. Fairfax is reporting the staffer in question works for shadow communications minister Jason Clare.

Labor has slammed the raids, with MP Mark Dreyfus telling ABC's Lateline that they are "extraordinary and unprecedented" during an election campaign and have "obvious political connotations." The shadow attorney-general also questioned whether Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull put pressure on the AFP to prioritise this investigation.

"There have been more than 20 serious national security-related leaks under this Abbott-Turnbull Government," Dreyfus said. "Not one of them has resulted in an AFP investigation."

However, the government has denied any role in the investigation, highlighting that the matter was originally referred to the AFP by nbn co back in December 2015, not the Liberal Party. AFP Commissioner Andrew Colvin echoed this, telling reporters this morning that his organisation "always acts independently."

Colvin also explained that he hadn't informed politicians about the raids until they were already underway—first calling the Prime Minister, before informing opposition leader Bill Shorten. The commissioner concluded his statement by promising to investigate allegations that some members of the media had been tipped off about the raids.

A claim of parliamentary privilege has been filed on the documents seized but the AFP during the raids. They will now be sealed, and not accessible by police until the Senate determines whether or not they are covered by privilege—after the July 2 election.

As The Age's Michael Bachelard explained the "documents apparently leaked from inside nbn co have revealed in recent months the extent of the cost blowouts, delays and inefficiencies in the Turnbull government's NBN rollout."

Before he rolled Tony Abbott for the prime ministership, Malcolm Turnbull held the communications portfolio—tasked with overseeing the NBN rollout. The Prime Minister has championed a fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) model, as opposed to Labor's fibre-to-the-home (FTTH).

FTTN, while delivering slower internet speeds, was meant to be the cheaper option, rolled out across the country more quickly. However, documents leaked to Fairfax showed the network's costs may blow out by $375 million, after it purchasing the badly aged Optus cable TV and broadband network. These expensive upgrades could also mean 600,000 homes may now have to wait to be connected until 2019 to be connected to the NBN.

More as this story develops.

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