"One of Professor Pascoe’s most vocal critics, Aboriginal entrepreneur Josephine Cashman, asked Peter Dutton for an investigation of Professor Pascoe for alleged “dishonesty offences” on December 11. Mr Dutton has since referred the matter to the AFP": theaustralian.com.au/nation/afp-eye…
There's a bunch of problems here. One, which I've noted previously, is the way the media reports 'referrals' of matters to the police. Such reports are easily misunderstood as implying that anyone at all thinks there's a credible suspicion of a criminal offence.
But a referral is... a letter. And 'police are investigating' is just 'police haven't written back'. None of it means squat, but all sides of politics try to make inappropriate hay of these things. The media should be hosing this down, not fanning the flames.
The other problem is one of criminal law, specifically the overcriminalisation and vague criminalisation of (alleged) lies. There's a widespread belief that all lies are crimes, but they aren't (and that'a good thing. Everyone lies sometimes, for good and bad reasons.)
Some lies are crimes in some circumstances, but it's complicated. Lying to get money? That can be a lie, but it depends. (Ever haggled?) The key legal issue is whether the lie was dishonest, and there are lots of different definitions of dishonesty in the criminal law.
The dishonesty requirement is there to stop people from being hassled by the cops or courts over what are really (alleged) moral or social errors. It's invidious to punish or even investigate people over most lies. I think that includes complex claims about Aboriginality.
The article is, unsurprisingly, vague about what crimes are actually being alleged, much less investigated. "Ms Cashman said Professor Pascoe had benefited financially from his claims including from his appointment “as an Aboriginal professor at UTS".
So, the allegation seems to be that he dishonestly obtained a financial advantage by deception, which is a crime in all states, including NSW, where it's bundled together with other deception crimes as 'fraud': classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/nsw/c…
Is (allegedly) lying to get a job fraud? Not always. It depends on whether the lie actually got you the job. Lots of people lie at job interviews, e.g. 'What are your biggest weaknesses?', 'Why do you want to work at this faculty?' And it also turns on whether you were dishonest.
NSW uses the same definition of dishonesty as the ACT, South Australia and (for now) the federal parliament: you are only dishonest if you breached ordinary people's standards and knew that you did that: classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/nsw/c… 
So, the issue isn't just a factual dispute about whether or not Pascoe's claim to Aboriginality (whatever claim that was) was correct (whatever that means), but also what he thought about his Aboriginality and whether making such claims would be accepted as honest.
In short, there's no credible crime to investigate unless there are credible reasons to think, not only that Pascoe lied about his Aboriginality, but that the lie got him a job, and he knew he was lying, and he knew ordinary people would think that such a lie was dishonest.
As I noted earlier, I very much doubt that the police are anywhere near to thinking any of this stuff, let alone all of it. And, absent that, whatever issues there are about Pascoe (assuming there are any at all) are matters for public debate, not police investigation.
But there's another thing to note. The article says that this is an AFP investigation, and they wouldn't be investigating a breach of NSW fraud law. Maybe they'll pass the case to the NSW police (and, again, that cross-referral will mean nothing beyond a jurisdictional point.)
However, perhaps what's alleged is a breach of a federal criminal law. There are federal crimes of dishonesty that are all about dishonest dealings with the federal government. Maybe something about a federal grant to Pascoe? I've no idea.
But it's worth pointing out that a government bill before the federal Parliament proposes to widen ALL of the dishonesty offences in the federal criminal code, by removing the requirement that prosecutors prove that alleged criminals knew that their actions were dishonest.
A senate committee is currently inquiring into that bill, which also rewrites the federal bribery offence and provides for deferred prosecution agreement: aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_…. Submissions on that bill close on Monday.
