Australian Treasurer Wayne Swan yesterday faced calls to resign immediately over allegations that he and Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd abused their power and misled parliament.
But Swan hit back, dismissing them as a “smear campaign” by the opposition, while Rudd said he had asked police to investigate whether someone concocted a fake e-mail purporting to show misuse of their positions.
As the government’s political crisis snowballed, opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull called for Swan to quit over his alleged role in trying to secure a government loan for a car dealer friend of Rudd.
“Mr Swan has offered no explanation for any of this and today should tender his resignation,” Turnbull said in a statement as the allegations snowballed into a potentially catastrophic political scandal for the government.
“He has misled the parliament and used the enormous influence of the commonwealth government to seek to secure an advantage for a mate and benefactor of the prime minister,” he said.
Turnbull had on Friday called on Rudd and Swan to either explain their roles in helping car dealer John Grant seek a loan and to justify their denials of wrongdoing to parliament, or resign.
Rudd told parliament this month that neither he nor his office had lobbied the treasury on behalf of Grant, a former neighbor of the prime minister who also provided a van for use by Rudd’s campaign.
Swan told parliament his office had simply passed on representations on behalf of Grant but said he did not know the outcome of the correspondence and denied trying to influence any decision.
But a senior treasury official told a parliamentary committee on Friday he thought he had received an e-mail from Rudd’s office asking him to look into funding for Grant, but could not be sure.
The Daily Telegraph yesterday published an e-mail allegedly showing Rudd’s office tried to secure a taxpayer-funded loan to Grant from the US$1.6 billion OzCar vehicle financing scheme.
Rudd said his government had asked police to investigate whether someone impersonating a public servant had composed a “fake” e-mail to smear him.
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