The director of the Serious Fraud Office must resign or be dismissed, following disclosures in today's select committee says National's Deputy Leader Roger Sowry.

"For the director of the Serious Fraud Office to seek counsel from the Attorney General, the State Services Commissioner, and the chief executive of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, prior to commencing an investigation into an aspect of National Party funding and then issue a media release was a fatal breach of his independence and a potential breach of S36 of the Serious Fraud Office Act. In doing so the director politicised a process which should have been characterised by professionalism, integrity and confidentiality.

"His actions were grossly improper, partisan and unprofessional. For him to have consulted our political opponents and their functionaries without even a telephone call to the head of the National Party organisation, the alleged victim, defies belief. His disclosures appear to breach both the spirit and the letter of his own Act.

"For these reasons the National Party can have no confidence in Mr Bradshaw as an independent and professional senior law officer. We call for him to resign or failing that to be dismissed.

"It is regrettable that both the Attorney General, the responsible Minister, and the State Services Commissioner, Mr Bradshaw's employer, are both fatally compromised by their involvement in this unprofessional and probably unlawful process," Mr Sowry said.

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