REVEALED: Ex-Labor leader Bill Shorten was warned by a mysterious ‘Deep Throat’ that a historic rape allegation against him was set to ‘blow up’ his chances of becoming prime minister just weeks before the election
- ‘Liberal Party Deep Throat’ sparked Labor election fear of a looming sex scandal
- Distressed Bill Shorten hired high-powered lawyers to fight claim, new book says
- Fears groundless as claim was 30 years old, already investigated and unproven
- Liberal Party denies it sent in any ‘mole’ to derail Labour before the election
A Liberal Party affiliate derailed former Labor leader Bill Shorten by warning historic and unproven rape allegations were set to torpedo his 2019 election campaign, an explosive new book claims.
The man secretly advised Mr Shorten’s team of a looming sex scandal just weeks before Mr Morrison called the election, according to a new book by reporter Samantha Maiden.
‘The man claimed he had been ‘helping’ the Prime Minister with background on the rape claim, but that now he had ‘played him’ he was happy to hand it over to the ALP,’ Ms Maiden writes in her new book Party Animals.
Former Opposition leader Bill Shorten was said to be rattled by the ‘secret advice’ just before the 2019 election was called, according to an explosive new book
The ‘secret advice’ seriously rattled Mr Shorten, upsetting and distracting him just before the election which Labor lost, Ms Maiden writes.
The fears proved baseless as no major media outlet aired the allegations which were unproven, highly defamatory and vigorously denied by Mr Shorten.
A spokesperson for Prime Minister Scott Morrison strongly denied any suggestion that the Liberal Party had deliberately sent a mole into the Labor camp to rattle Mr Shorten before the election.
‘These assertions are completely false,’ the spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia on Saturday.
‘This is yet another attempt by Labor to invent stories to try and excuse their poor performance at the election.’
A spokesperson for Bill Shorten’s office said simply that the former Opposition leader had given the election campaign his best effort.
‘Bill and the Labor team gave the campaign every ounce of their energy, attention and commitment,’ he told Daily Mail Australia on Saturday.
The well-connected Liberal Party figure at the heart of the allegations was dubbed ‘Deep Throat’ by the Australian Labor Party (ALP), Ms Maiden writes.
The original Deep Throat was the secret FBI informant that famously exposed the Watergate scandal to Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.
When the scandal became public, it forced the resignation of US President Richard Nixon in 1974.
The historic allegation allegedly raised by the operative relates to claims by Kathy Sherriff that she was raped by Mr Shorten at an event organised in the 1980s by Labor’s youth wing.
Police investigated the accusation in 2013 and did not lay charges, saying there was no case to answer.
A spokesperson for Prime Minister Scott Morrison denied on Saturday that the Liberal Party had sent in any mole to rattle Mr Shorten with historic, unproven rape allegations
Mr Shorten publicly denied the allegation as soon as he was able, when the police investigation ended.
‘The allegations were untrue and abhorrent. This has been deeply distressing for my family,’ he said at the time, as reported in The Australian.
After ‘Deep Throat’ secretly warned the Labor camp about the supposed impending sex scandal, Mr Morrison appeared to allude to the allegation in the last question time before he called the election.
While talking about the budget, Mr Morrison casually dropped a reference to Bill Shorten partying at Labor vanguard conferences in 1989, Ms Maiden writes in her book.
‘Vanguard’ was the name of the ALP camp where the alleged assault occurred, and the reference immediately raised the alarm at ALP headquarters.
The original Deep Throat, Mark Felt (pictured left), was a former FBI official who exposed the Watergate scandal in the US to Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein
Ms Maiden writes that Mr Shorten was so upset he hired high-powered commercial law firm Arnold Bloch Leiber and a Victorian silk, Neil Clelland QC, to prepare legal arguments and defamation writs.
Labor was afraid that tabloid newspapers would interview Ms Sherriff and the issue would blow up in the middle of the election campaign.
Ms Maiden writes that the threat damaged the ALP’s election campaign, including when someone told Mr Shorten that News Corp was going to run stories on the rape claim just before a press conference where he clashed with a Ten Network reporter over climate-change policy costings on April 17.
Samantha Maiden’s book Party Animals is due out on Tuesday, published by Viking.