[1] The scandal originated following a report by the Herald Sun that the Australian Labor Party had arranged for electorate officers for Victorian MPs to wear political attire ('red shirts') and campaign for the party in marginal seats during the 2014 Victorian state election.
Eventually, the then-Greens leader Greg Barber introduced a motion in the Victorian Legislative Council for the ombudsman Deborah Glass to investigate.
The ombudsman report identified $388,000 in taxpayer money had been used in the scheme with 21 Labor MPs involved in the breach of rules.
[3] Reference to the red shirts scandal was made in discussing a somewhat separate but related political scandal a few years later; after it emerged that ALP members had used parliamentary resources to engage the stacking of ALP member branches.
[6] The use of parliamentary funds to stack branches emerged after a sting on the office of Adem Somyurek conducted by The Age.