Zed quizzed on 'fraud'

Canberra Liberals' leader Zed Seselja now stands accused of allowing his office to be used to channel taxpayer funds directly into the Liberal Party.

The ACT Government has used parliamentary privilege to allege that one of Mr Seselja's staff has been working full time for the Liberal Party for at least 12 months while officially employed as one of Mr Seselja's taxpayer funded staff.

And in the Legislative Assembly this morning, ACT Greens Leader Meredith Hunter questioned whether Mr Seselja had indulged in "fraudulent" activities in relation to his taxpayer-funded staff.

Mr Seselja's office will now be forced to submit to a workplace audit of its employment practices going back to 2009 after Labor and Greens MLA's voted to direct the speaker to commission the probe.

Labor backbencher John Hargreaves alleged this morning that Mr Seselja's director of electorate services Tio Faulkner, who is also the President of the Liberal Party, has been working full time at the Canberra Liberal's headquarters for at least 12 months.

"There is the possibility, nay the probability, that a member of the staff of the Leader of the Opposition has worked predominantly off-site without approval, has in fact therefore drawn salary from the Legislative Assembly's appropriations to be the president of the Canberra Liberals," Mr Hargreaves told the chamber this morning.

"In other words the Canberra taxpayers are paying someone to manage a political party."

But Mr Seselja continued to insist that the matter, first revealed in The Canberra Times last week, was all about time sheets submitted late, that all the required documentation had been lodged and that Mr Hargreaves' motion was a political stunt.

"Let's be clear about why the Government is seeking to stir this up," Mr Seselja told the chamber.

"They are seeking to stir this up because in an election year they don't want to talk about their record, they don't want to talk about what they're doing," he said.