Facing renewed calls to resign over the NSW Liberal political donations scandal, cabinet secretary Arthur Sinodinos has enlisted lawyers to seek a retraction of a NSW Electoral Commission report.
The commission is refusing to pay the Liberals more than $4.4 million until it reveals the secret donors who poured about $700,000 into the party's coffers ahead of the 2011 state election, when Senator Sinodinos was its treasurer and finance director.
In a seven-page letter to the commission released at 10pm on Friday, lawyers have sought it "immediately retract all references to Senator Sinodinos" in a statement released on Wednesday, which they say erroneously conveys that he knowingly disguised donations.
Senator Sinodinos himself slammed the commission's statement on Thursday as "flawed" and called for a retraction.
He said he played no part in the party's refusal to release details of the donations, a statement backed up in the legal letter.
"We are concerned that the commission has not treated Senator Sinodinos fairly," the letter said.
It added that to the extent the statement suggested the commission had concluded that Senator Sinodinos knew, condoned or supported the disguising of donations was "manifestly wrong" and was formed without affording Senator Sinodinos "procedural fairness" or "basic decency".
Deputy Opposition Leader Tanya Plibersek on Friday said it was extraordinary that Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull had not sacked or stood aside Senator Sinodinos, his "numbers man", over the scandal.
"It beggars belief that the treasurer and finance director of the Liberal Party didn't know about an elaborate arrangement to channel hundreds of thousands of dollars of illegal donations to the Liberal Party," Ms Plibersek told reporters on Friday.
Mr Turnbull has insisted the donations should be disclosed.
"Election donations, political donations, whether they are made to a state division of the Liberal Party or the federal division, should all be disclosed in accordance with law," he told the ABC's Lateline program on Thursday.
"The fact is the party must comply with the law. If the law has not been complied with they should fess up, set all the facts out on the table, and let the cards fall where they may."
The party's NSW division says it had been waiting for the state's corruption watchdog to hand down its findings from hearings in 2014, and would comply with the commission's ruling.
The decision comes after NSW Premier Mike Baird urged the party's state director to reveal the details of political donors.
"They (the NSW Liberals) have done the wrong thing. It is unacceptable," Mr Baird told reporters in Sydney.
"We have to cop it on the chin, and we need to get on with it."
