Peter Slipper faces dishonesty charges after third attempt to drop them fails
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Version 0 of 1. The dishonesty case against the former federal parliamentary Speaker Peter Slipper will continue after his lawyers failed for a third time to have the charges dropped. Slipper is charged with misusing about $900 of taxpayer funds to visit wineries outside Canberra three times in 2010. He admits using commonwealth Cabcharge vouchers to pay for the trips but denies acting dishonestly. Slipper's lawyers applied to have the charges dropped, arguing the prosecution had failed to prove the winery trips were not part of federal parliamentary business. The ACT chief magistrate, Lorraine Walker, ruled on Thursday that the evidence could prove the former MP's guilt and ordered the case to continue. Slipper faces up to a year in prison and fines totalling $10,000. Walker said the evidence before the court showed Slipper had probably made work phone calls and had talked about work while on the trips. But that was not enough to prove the travel was for parliamentary business. “It would be akin to someone taking a personal holiday and taking a work phone call and claiming it as a tax deduction,” she said. The “overwhelming inference” was that the travel to the wineries was to do what one usually does at wineries. The evidence, taken at its highest, was enough to satisfy the court beyond reasonable doubt, Walker said. The prosecution alleges Slipper manually filled out multiple vouchers for the journeys to hide the non-parliamentary nature of the trips, one of which involved several stops at wineries over four and a half hours. Walker said there was no correlation between the breakdown of the fares and the journeys taken on the three days. Some of the dockets showed trips to Parliament House even though Slipper had not been taken there, she said. Slipper's lawyers can now present the defence case. |