BURKE MUST PUT UP OR SHUT UP
16 September 2026
STARTS
Tony Burke must immediately substantiate the serious allegations he made during Question Time today concerning conduct during the 2025 Federal Election.
If the Minister for Home Affairs has evidence that the law was broken by anyone, Australians deserve to know what whether that evidence has been acted upon.
If that evidence doesn’t exist, he must apologise to the Parliament and to the Australian people.
Shadow Assistant Minister for Electoral Matters Ben Small said Tony Burke had some simple questions to answer.
“Tony Burke needs to put up or shut up.”
“You don’t get to stand in Parliament and allege serious wrongdoing at the last Federal Election and then wander away without producing a shred of evidence. At this point, the Minister in charge of our most capable law enforcement agencies has made allegations on the floor of Parliament that wouldn’t meet a single evidentiary threshold, passing only as perhaps idle gossip, rumour or gross innuendo.”
“If Tony Burke has hard evidence, he should have handed it to the police and people should be in jail by now.”
Mr Small said it was unbecoming of the Minister for Home Affairs.
“This isn’t a Labor backbencher throwing around accusations. This is the Minister for Home Affairs. The election was 16 months ago, and if he has evidence, the perpetrators of undermining our democracy should be in jail. If he can’t produce evidence, he’s just exposed himself as another Labor liar desperate to talk about anything except the economy that is tanking on their watch.”
“When a Minister responsible for one of the nation’s most important security and law enforcement agencies raises allegations of wrongdoing, Australians expect those allegations to be backed by evidence.”
“Either there is evidence serious enough to warrant action by the police, or Tony Burke needs to explain exactly what he was doing making the allegation in the first place.”
“The Home Affairs portfolio should never be diminished by base hyper-partisan allegations that cannot be substantiated.”
ENDS