Mal Brough faces fresh parliamentary pressure over his role in the downfall of the former speaker Peter Slipper, after his attempt to walk away from a key admission was undermined by 60 Minutes releasing the unedited interview exchange.
The Nine Network published transcripts of its interview with Brough and released video after the special minister of state accused the program of selectively editing a question about his contact with Slipper’s former staffer James Ashby.
Labor pressed Brough again in parliament on Tuesday – the second week he has faced question-time scrutiny stemming from Australian federal police executing a search warrant on his Sunshine Coast home in November.
With Malcolm Turnbull due to return from overseas climate talks on Wednesday and parliament scheduled to rise for the summer break at the end of the week, Labor has stepped up its calls for prime minister to act and argued his government colleagues knew Brough’s position was untenable.
Brough has pointed to extracts of a federal court decision setting aside a previous decision throwing out a sexual harassment case against Slipper brought by Ashby.
But in question time on Tuesday, the shadow attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, suggested the judgment “was handed down before the minister admitted on national television to procuring copies of the former speaker’s official diary”.
Brough told parliament: “In relation to the 60 Minutes interview, what was put to air was not the full question.”
The program, which went to air in 2014, broadcast the journalist Liz Hayes asking: “Did you ask James Ashby to procure copies of Peter Slipper’s diary for you?”
It broadcast Brough’s reply: “Yes I did.”
Following Brough’s claim on Tuesday, Guardian Australia sought a copy of the relevant exchange from 60 Minutes. The Nine Network provided a lengthy transcript of the interview, which included this exchange:
Q: Um why then also did you um assis, seek well, [plane noise] did you ask James Ashby to procure um copies of Peter Slipper’s diary for for you?
M: [10:32:19] Yes I did.
Q: Why did you do that?
M: [10:32:22] Because I believed Peter Slipper had committed a crime. I believed he was defrauding the commonwealth ...
The transcript suggests the omission of the false start at the beginning of the exchange did not materially affect the substance of the proposition to which Brough was agreeing.
Nine News also broadcast the original video of the Q&A in its primetime bulletin on Tuesday evening.
The Ashby issue threatens to pose a continuing political problem for the government as it prepares for the final parliamentary sitting days before the summer recess.
The justice minister, Michael Keenan, whose portfolio includes the AFP, confirmed the police had informed him of the Brough search warrant before it was executed, “as is usual practice”.
When asked whether he had notified any ministerial colleagues beforehand, Kennan said: “After the warrants were executed, as I would normally do in a matter like this, I informed the prime minister’s chief of staff and the attorney general as the cabinet minister in the portfolio.”
Turnbull, who has so far expressed cautious confidence in Brough, has previously left the door open to reconsidering the issue if there were new developments.
During question time on Tuesday, Dreyfus also challenged Brough’s claim that the federal court had found in 2014 that he had acted appropriately.
In response, Brough pointed to a passage that said: “We are also of the opinion that there was no basis for the primary judge to conclude that Brough was part of any combination with anyone in respect to the commencement of these proceedings with the predominant purpose of damaging Slipper in the way alleged or at all.”
He read to the parliament a further extract about Brough connecting Ashby with a lawyer: “Despite Brough’s hesitation at seeing Ashby he did so and referred him to Russell QC. There is absolutely nothing untoward about those matters.”
These were extracts from a February 2014 decision by two of the three federal court judges who considered a previous decision by judge Steven Rares to throw out Ashby’s sexual harassment case on the grounds of abuse of process.
Dreyfus said Brough had not been a party to the federal court case. “He has not been cleared of any criminal wrongdoing; there has never been a finding by a court that he acted appropriately,” Dreyfus told parliament.
“In fact the paragraphs of the court judgment that the member for Fisher keeps referring to in this place as if they exonerated him in fact confirm that he received the parts of the diary that were taken from the former speaker of this House; they confirm that he was in receipt of these documents; they confirm the crux of the serious criminal allegations now levelled against him; they confirm without a shadow of a doubt the factual basis of the criminal allegations that the federal police are considering charging this member with.”
Ashby gave his own account of his interactions with Brough and the MP for Longman, Wyatt Roy, in an interview published by the Australian on Tuesday.
The former staffer told the newspaper he spoke in 2012 to Roy, who “said he didn’t really know how to advise me and said he wanted to speak with Christopher Pyne”.
Ashby said Roy “then called me back and I went and saw him in his office and he presented me a sheet of paper with instructions of what I should do, and one of the first steps was to get a copy of the office diary. That is how I came to be printing off a copy of the digital diary – it was evidence in my case.”
Roy’s office declined to comment on the allegations on Tuesday, but it is believed he has previously claimed to have told Ashby only to “diarise events”.
Ashby told the Australian newspaper he had met Brough “and he said at one stage that he was interested in Slipper’s use of taxpayer entitlements and about a few trips he had taken to New Zealand and I said I had a copy of his diary and would check it out”.
“So I went home and pulled the copy of the diary out of my cupboard, took some pictures of the relevant dates and sent them to Mal,” Ashby told the newspaper.
“He couldn’t read them and texted me and asked if I could send them again – that’s hardly procuring me.”
In February, Slipper won a legal battle in the Australian Capital Territory supreme court to overturn his conviction for dishonestly using taxpayer-funded taxi vouchers worth nearly $1,000 to visit wineries outside Canberra in 2010.
The full 60 Minutes transcript
A full extract of the relevant exchange between Liz Hayes and Mal Brough, as provided by 60 Minutes on Tuesday:
Q Um why then also did you um assis, seek well, [plane noise] did you ask James Ashby to procure um copies of Peter Slipper’s diary for for you?
M [10:32:19] Yes I did.
Q Why did you do that?
M [10:32:22] Because I believed Peter Slipper had committed a crime. I believed he was defrauding the Commonwealth and the courts have…
Q [10:32:26] When did you become the police?
M [10:32:27] … and the, and the courts have fundamentally [plane noise] have actually now proven that to be the case.
Q [10:32:33] When did you become the police?
M [10:32:35] Well Liz if you don’t think it’s right, if you believe someone’s defrauding someone [noise still] and you have the capacity to uncover that…
Q [10:32:43] Why didn’t you go to the police?
M [10:32:44] [plane louder] I had no evidence.
Q Why didn’t you ask them to investigate? Why did you get James Ashby and his ah colleague to do ah your work for you?
M [10:32:53] Well Liz the fact is that they had been asked via many different media outlets to have the Commonwealth investigate and many people had asked for where Mr Slipper was and why he was in places and we couldn’t get the answers.
Q [10:33:10] So you you decided that it would be appropriate to ah surreptitiously ah procure that information.
M Yeah that’s your call.
Q [10:33:20] Do you feel good about that?
M Um…
Q Is that the right thing to do?
M [10:33:24] Ah I felt that Mr Slipper had for a very long time done the wrong thing in, in a criminals action and that has proven to be true in a court of law.
Q [10:33:33] Was that the right thing to secretly…
M Well that’s…
Q … get copies of his diary?
M [10:33:36] Liz that’s for others to judge. You can judge and [over talk].
Q [10:33:39] You believe it was the right thing to do.
M [10:33:40] Well I’ll let others to judge that.
Q [10:33:41] You believe it’s the right thing to do?
M I will let others judge that.
Q [10:33:44] Well you did it, does that mean you still believe it was the right thing to do?
M [10:33:48] I will let others judge that.
Q Would you have done it to Tony Abbott who’s had to repay more than ten thousand dollars in travel allowances? Would you have asked for copies of his diary secretly? Would you have done that to Barnaby Joyce?
M [10:34:01] See it’s interesting how we like to draw these analogies when the reality is that one person has been found, found by a court of law to have actually altered documents to create a profit for themselves at the cost of the Commonwealth. No one…
Q [10:34:16] If you, if if you…
M Liz…
Q … thought, if you thought…
M … no one has…
Q … Tony Abbott had been misusing his…
M [10:34:20] … Liz no one has …
Q … travel allowance, would you have asked a member of his staff to …
M [10:34:23] … Liz no one…
Q … surreptitiously get a copy of his diary…
M [10:34:26] Liz no one…
Q … would you have done that?
M [10:34:27] Liz no one is making those suggestions and I think it’s quite wrong of you to make that assumption.
Q [10:34:32] My point is that why would you do that to Peter Slipper in that manner and not do it to others?
M [10:34:39] Because Peter Slipper had been on the public record for year after year of doing things which could not be answered and ultimately the Commonwealth and the taxpayer has been paid and you know if don’t, if we just want to turn a blind eye to these things, well that’s a decision for you.
Q [10:34:58] My point is that you decided to become the police.
M [10:35:00] No I didn’t decide to become the police, I decided to become a concerned…
Q You did the investigation.
M … a concerned individual.
Q [10:35:04] You did the investigation. You didn’t go to the police with certain dates and concerns, you did the investigation yourself.
M [10:35:12] You can draw that conclusion.
Q Well you did.
M [10:35:14] Well you can draw that conclusion Liz, that’s fine.
Q [10:35:17] Well is that appropriate?
M [10:35:17] Oh absolutely it’s appropriate.
Q [10:35:20] You don’t think for a minute that was out of order?
M No I don’t believe that was out of order.
