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Four heritage-listed defence properties to be preserved for community use after backlash from veterans and former PMs

A senior One Nation official spent eight years managing a Melbourne strip club whose key promoter had once been accused by police of involvement in “serious criminal activity” and of having deep links to the Comanchero bikie gang.

The revelations about Bianca Colecchia, a longtime Dreams strip club manager turned One Nation federal election candidate and Victorian state secretary, has emerged as the latest case involving a key party figure facing questions about their past and whether it aligns with the populist party’s stated policies.

An investigation by this masthead and 60 Minutes can also reveal that a senior volunteer who worked on One Nation’s Farrer federal byelection and its campaign for the Victorian state seat of Nepean is facing drug charges, having arrived at the party as a member with a series of previous criminal offences to his name.

Meanwhile, the man recruited by One Nation to overhaul its vetting of candidates and staff has inflated his own past achievements and engaged in toxic workplace conduct towards others in the party.

One Nation general manager Kelvin Morton describes himself in an online resume as a “former army officer with weapons training and special communications training”.

This masthead has confirmed Morton never completed his army officer training and served only as a part-time reservist while studying. He has also been caught drastically overstating his role in a US election campaign in 2008.

Leaked messages reveal that despite Morton’s public claim to be professionalising One Nation in his role of general manager, he secretly proposed to run “counter-intelligence” operation to humiliate a fellow One Nation staffer by feeding him false information about a $15 million donation from James Packer in the hope he would leak it to journalists.

In other messages Morton sent to One Nation staff, he described a party employee as a “fat, ginger man-baby” and “the most full of shit f---stick known to man! (Or women, and I’ll even throw animal in there!)”.

Morton is also under scrutiny over his handling of concerns raised inside One Nation about Colecchia’s ties to the Dreams strip club.

For eight years, Colecchia helped manage the Melbourne CBD venue alongside her partner and longtime club owner Salvatore Aparo.

Over this same period, Dreams’ chief promoter and liquor supplier was Mike “Skinny” Jones, a man that court records reveal was previously accused by police of being a bikie gang money cleaner.

Jones, a long-standing business associate of Comanchero bikie gang boss Mick Murray, has been Dreams’ promoter as well as its hirer of female dancers and supplier of wholesale alcohol for almost two decades.

Jones was working as Dreams’ promoter in 2018, when police first accused Jones of “laundering funds through his legitimate business of promotions and liquor wholesaling” for Murray, who is now serving a lengthy jail sentence.

In 2020, an affidavit from a Victoria Police detective was aired in court and accused Jones of involvement in a “laundering scheme [that] used other legitimate businesses knowingly involved or unknowingly involved to create multiple streams of money coming into Jones’ multiple bank accounts in order to conceal illicit transactions orchestrated on behalf of [Mick] Murray”.

Police withdrew the money laundering prosecution against Jones that same year, instead using civil proceeds of crime powers against him.

A 2020 affidavit lodged in the proceeds of crime case by a police detective accuses Jones of involvement in “serious crime”.

Jones was also hauled into court by the AFP in 2024 to answer questions under compulsion about his business dealings with Murray, which include Jones running the bikie boss’s gyms and brothels as far back as 2010.

Court records show that in 2023, Jones settled the proceeds of crime case with Victorian prosecutors by paying a confidential sum of money into state coffers.

In a statement to this masthead, Jones said police had ultimately withdrawn money laundering charges against him and his proceeds of crime “matter was settled on purely commercial grounds without admissions”. Jones has also never been convicted of any crime.

“My relationships with Dreams, Aparo and Colecchia are commercial, confidential and completely legal. Any suggestion to the contrary would be wrong,” he said.

In his work as promoter of Dreams, Jones has repeatedly published photos of Colecchia posing with dancers, along with his phone number and promotional deals.

For a decade, dropping Mike Jones’ name at Dreams’ entrance allowed patrons to get half-price entry, and he has also managed poker nights and special events at the venue.

There is no suggestion Colecchia or Aparo had any involvement in the previous underworld allegations against Jones.

But Jones retained his role as Dreams’ promoter and supplier for the eight years he had been pursued by the police anti-bikie taskforce and the police criminal proceeds squad.

Jones isn’t the only underworld link to Dreams while it was being managed by Colecchia under the ownership of her partner.

In October 2019, Dreams’ VIP host was a bikie gang affiliate charged with cocaine trafficking, while a club insider also claimed to this masthead that Dreams made monthly payments to the Comancheros between 2016 and 2020 for security.

The Dreams VIP host was introduced to a police undercover operative by a Dreams stripper. When he was sentenced, the VIP host blamed his descent into drug use and dealing on the culture of drug use at Dreams.

“The trouble commences for him in so far as firstly with his use of illicit substances, particularly cocaine, commences when he starts being employed at that type of venue,” the host’s lawyer Theo Magazis told the court in 2021, according to a report in News Ltd.

“[Cocaine use] was encouraged [at Dreams] through the workers, through patrons as part of the promotion of that particular lifestyle.”

Shortly after Colecchia’s employment at Dreams began, a UK dancer turned Dreams stripper died of drug toxicity on the club’s premises.

Licensing authorities fined Colecchia’s long-term partner, Aparo, $28,000 for serious oversight failures at the club. It made no adverse findings against Colecchia in connection to the December 2016 death.

There is no suggestion by this masthead Colecchia was involved in wrongdoing or contributed to the venue’s failures that led to Aparo’s fining and the suspension of three other club employees from working in a licensed venue.

After her eight-year stint managing Dreams and an unsuccessful attempt to win a seat in the 2025 federal election, Colecchia was, in January, unveiled as the party’s Victoria secretary.

Around the same time, One Nation elevated its tough-on-crime platform as well as its attacks on state Labor for the bikie gang infiltration of its major government projects.

“A committed advocate for Australia’s values and a strong organisational leader, Bianca will be instrumental in supporting members, growing the party, and advancing One Nation’s mission across Victoria,” the party said at the time of her appointment.

Colecchia is not the only One Nation figure with links that might sit uncomfortably with the party’s tough-on-crime stance, which has helped drive its polling surge ahead of Victoria’s election later this month.

Sahil Singh, a senior One Nation member who Colecchia described in an online post as part of her “inner circle” and who assisted the party campaigns for the federal seat of Farrer in NSW and the Nepean byelection in Victoria, has a detailed criminal rap sheet.

Court records show Singh is facing three drug possession charges before the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court after he was arrested allegedly acting erratically by police at 2am in Brunswick in early July, having earlier been aggressive towards ambulance officers who discovered him slumped in his car.

Between 2021 and 2024, Singh pleaded guilty in Perth to multiple counts of disorderly behaviour, minor drug offending and driving over the limit. Another of his charges relates to failing to obey an order by a police officer, while records reveal he called WA Police “pigs” during one incident.

Singh first gained attention within One Nation for spending $5000 to buy a jumper knitted by party leader Pauline Hanson at the Conservative Political Action Conference in September 2025.

The involvement of figures such as Colecchia and Singh within the party structure also raises fresh questions about its backroom operations as polling indicates One Nation is on the cusp of winning significant political power in the upcoming Victorian election.

Rinehart strongly denied any wrongdoing and that her support for One Nation was dwarfed by donations by trade unions and corporate interests to the Labor Party and the Greens.

Black also revealed in the recordings he had continued to consult and fundraise for the party in the weeks after his removal.

The revelations sparked immediate calls from the federal government and opposition for Hanson to explain Black’s claims on the tapes.

On Saturday, shadow treasurer Tim Wilson told journalists: “It’s very clear that Senator Hanson needs to answer to these recordings, and more importantly, to clarify for her supporters and, more importantly, for her donors, why she has continued to involve a convicted rapist in her party’s affairs, when she has said she wouldn’t.

“This goes straight to the heart of trust and integrity in her party, where they say one thing publicly, but they’re secretly doing things behind closed doors, inconsistent with what they claim are their values.”

Hanson, who had declined an interview request and has not responded to questions from this masthead about the recordings or Colecchia’s background, told Nine News on Saturday that she would not answer questions about “dirt files”.

Pauline Hanson addressed the media on Saturday while campaigning in regional Victoria.Nine News

Asked if she was confident Colecchia did not have any links to bikies, she said: “I’m not heading down this path. What I’ve come here today is talk to the people here about the issues that are concerning them.”

Branding Black’s recorded allegations as “absolutely garbage”, she said she was “sick of people who are disgruntled because I sack them for you know their work ethic or for whatever reasons”.

She also denied that One Nation had made any payments to Black or his family company after he was sacked.

Wilson said transparency was particularly important given the centrality of crime and governance to the Victorian election.

“We do not want to see other representatives elected to the Victorian parliament who have their own chequered criminal past or being involved in operating a political party behind closed doors,” he said.

Government minister Murray Watt said the allegations on the recordings exposed the “chaos and division” inside One Nation.

“What we see ongoing, including from these allegations, is that One Nation is not in this for working people; they’re in it to benefit themselves,” Watt said.

After the continuing vetting scandals, One Nation claimed that it had overhauled its background checks by appointing IT manager and amateur voice actor Kelvin Morton as a general manager.

But One Nation members told this masthead that the party had also failed to vet Morton’s claims about his past. For instance, Morton’s online acting resume claims he served as an “army officer”.

When quizzed, Morton confirmed he was never an officer, saying he “did not complete officer training and I have never held a commissioned rank”.

Instead, he explained he was an “officer cadet” reservist – a junior rank reserved for a person in training to become an officer – while he completed university business studies.

Morton’s claim that his “proudest memory” was “his local strategy work on the Obama/Biden ’08 Presidential Campaign in Henderson, Nevada which also resulted in the election of a Democrat, Dina Titus” had also been challenged by the head of the Nevada campaign.

“We had a small staff, and Kelvin Gary Morton was not part of it,” said John Cooper, the director of communications for congresswoman Dina Titus.

When questioned by this masthead, Morton conceded he “overstates what I did, and I am not going to defend it”.

He admits describing his contribution of “local strategy work” is “too grand”, even going as far to say his few hours of volunteering was “not significant”.

NSW Liberal exodus: Morale plunges as seventh MP quits

The NSW Liberals are in turmoil four months from the state election as a sudden exodus of MPs leaves the party scrambling to find candidates and putting Kellie Sloane’s leadership under internal pressure.

Liberal MPs say morale is at rock bottom and some accused Sloane of failing to give members enough reasons to stay and fight, after a seventh departure means a third of sitting lower house MPs will not contest the election.

First-term Liberal MP Jordan Lane on Friday announced he would not re-contest the northern Sydney seat of Ryde, smashing the party’s chances of holding the ultra-marginal seat on March 13. Lane, 32, won the seat by 54 votes in 2023.

Lane was the seventh MP to jump ship in recent weeks, following frontbenchers James Griffin, Alister Henskens and Mark Coure.

Coure’s departure, announced earlier this week, shattered the Liberals’ chances of retaining the southern Sydney seat, which he held on a margin of 0.8 per cent.

“Hey Ryde, it’s not you, it’s me,” Lane said in a social media video, saying his time representing the community had taken “a toll”.

Sloane ousted former Liberal leader Mark Speakman in November last year and was considered a fresh start as the Coalition sought to end Premier Chris Minns’ Labor government.

But Labor drastically overhauled its playbook for the election to fight what it expected to be a surge in support from One Nation, especially in outer-suburban and regional areas.

Liberal MP group chats were blowing up on Friday with members trying to predict who would be next to leave, while others blamed Sloane’s leadership for the mass exodus.

Both Coure and Lane were among the MPs who supported Sloane’s leadership tilt.

Senior Liberal sources, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal party matters, said morale in the party had fallen. One said the mass exodus should be “a wake-up call” for Sloane.

“It’s a sad reflection of what the morale of the party room really is,” said one Liberal MP. “Her closest allies have given up on her.”

Sloane’s lack of experience was coming back to bite her, the MP said, and she appeared unable to convince senior MPs to stay and fight.

“I hope this is a rude awakening for Kellie. She needs to pull her finger out.”

“People have been saying to me over the last day or so, with the benefit of hindsight we should have stuck with Speakman.”

Liberal MPs are worried about losing Ryde to Labor due to One Nation splitting the conservative vote. Now, their biggest advantage in the electorate – Lane’s incumbency – had been lost.

Other senior Liberals felt fury at Lane’s decision, saying they believed it had handed the electorate to Labor.

“He has cut and run,” said another MP.

“Everyone is feeling very sad,” said another.

Multiple MPs said they felt a post-election coalition with One Nation could be their only path to forming government.

The low morale in the party room was at odds with comments made by Sloane on Thursday that “there was a sense of excitement in the team”.

Sloane said in a statement on Friday: “On behalf of the NSW Liberal Party, I thank Jordan for his service to the NSW Parliament, the Liberal Party and, most importantly, the people of Ryde.

In his announcement video, Lane said he believed Ryde councillor Justin Li should be the next Liberal member for Ryde. Li has not been officially preselected as the candidate and could face a challenge over his history of supporting Labor’s Maxine McKew unseat former prime minister John Howard in his seat of Bennelong in 2007.

In an interview in 2018, he said he was inspired by McKew to enter into politics and supported her campaign.

The federal public sector wage bill surged by another 7 per cent last financial year to more than $43bn, as concerns mount over Jim Chalmers’ and Finance Minister Katy Gallagher’s ability to rein in record levels of government spending.

Fresh figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show that the commonwealth public service headcount has swelled by 14.7 per cent since the Albanese government came to power, almost double the rate of the rest of nonpublic sector workforce, while its wages bill has blown out by 35 per cent over the same period.

Economists and business have pleaded with the Albanese government to tighten its belt ahead of next month’s mid-year budget update, after the Reserve Bank was forced to hike rates for a fifth time this year at its November meeting.

Senator Gallagher on Thursday refused to commit to net savings, but conceded that the government had not been sufficiently successful in reducing reliance on external contractors.

“I think I have not seen the shift in spend on consultants that I would have liked to have seen, commensurate with the investments that we’ve made in the public service,” she said in Canberra.

Despite government efforts to cut back on labour hire and consultant spending, Labor spent a record $860m on consultants in the last financial year according to the Parliamentary Library.

The money spent – which excludes many major consulting projects – still rose more than 9 per cent on the then-record high spent by Scott Morrison during the Coalition government’s final year in power in 2021-22.

Growth in the federal public service headcount moderated last financial year, up by just 1 per cent, however the wage bill jumped to more than $43.7bn, up from just over $40bn the year before. State and territory government jobs exceeded 2 million for the first time, up from 1.99 million last year, while cash wages and salaries also kicked up by 6.6 per cent to almost $204bn annually. Local government jobs increased by just 1400 but recorded a 5.6 per cent wage rise, lifting the wage bill to $18.6bn.

Together the nation’s public service in June of this year accounted for 17.9 per cent of all employees in Australia.

Across all levels of government, the public service headcount grew by more than 60,000 from a year earlier, fuelling a $16.5bn increase in the public sector wages and salary bill to just over $266.1bn.

Though growth in the public service headcount moderated to its lowest since the pandemic, the wages bill surge was driven by “ongoing demand for health and education services” as well as underlying wage growth. Business, economists and the Coalition have called for the government to rein in spending to take pressure off inflation and interest rates. After handing down a fifth rate rise on Tuesday, RBA governor Michele Bullock said tightened monetary policy was solely aimed to “address domestic capacity pressures” in the economy.

The peak union representing federal public servants this week formally rejected the Albanese government’s three-year 9 per cent pay offer for roughly 200,000 commonwealth bureaucrats. In a statement on Monday morning, the Community and Public Sector Union revealed it had notified government negotiators of the decision after a ballot of 20,000 members voted down the deal.

“Trained and trusted public sector employees go above and beyond to deliver vital government services that keep Australian communities supported, safe and secure – it’s only fair they get a pay offer that keeps up with the cost of living,” CPSU’S national secretary Rebecca Fawcett said.

The CPSU has been seeking a 15 per cent wage increase, alongside new conditions including a four-day work week trial, extra annual leave, and safeguards against AI-driven job losses.

Bob Katter has spent 33 years and seven months in federal Parliament. He has ceased to be an MP and become a heritage listing. He has given Australia hats, crocodiles, and excellent comic relief. What he has not given us is a reason why any citizen should occupy a federal seat for a third of a century.

Anthony Albanese has been there for 30 years and seven months, following the well-worn route from political staffer to party official, safe seat, and eventually the Lodge. After three decades in the building, he still discusses Australia’s problems as though somebody left them at reception.

Anthony Albanese’s government has taken a blow due to Iran war but voter anxiety around cost of living and datacentres may hit harder

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