Labor has moved to keep the pressure on Mal Brough on the last sitting day before parliament breaks for summer as it attempted to censure the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, over his judgment in appointing Brough special minister of state.
On Wednesday Brough denied he had asked James Ashby, a former staffer of the former Speaker, Peter Slipper, to procure Slipper’s official diary, despite having said on an interview on 60 Minutes last year that he had.
Turnbull defended Brough, saying “guilt or innocence is not determined by public denunciation”.
Labor moved a censure motion in the House of Representatives as the first order of business in the chamber on Thursday.
The shadow attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, said Brough had misled parliament “on three separate occasions this week” over questioning on his 60 Minutes interview.
Dreyfus’s motion attempted to censure Turnbull “for failing to enforce his own criteria for taking action and sacking the special minister of state for repeatedly misleading the parliament”.
“What will it take for this prime minister to act?” Dreyfus asked.
The motion was seconded by the manager of opposition business, Tony Burke.
“The minister has misled this house three times in the last two days and the prime minister thinks that’s OK,” Burke said.
The government quickly gagged debate and the motion failed. No Coalition MPs stood up to defend Brough.
“This is a government where no one is prepared to back Mal Brough,” the opposition spokesman on infrastructure, Anthony Albanese, said.
A similar censure motion brought forward on Wednesday also failed.
The leader of the house, Christopher Pyne, said Brough should be subject to proper due process, after the Australian federal police executed a search warrant on his Queensland home earlier this year.
“I do think he should stay as the special minister of state. I mean, if there is an investigation being conducted by the AFP then due process demands that the investigation continue. If he’s charged with an offence, that’s a whole different matter,” he told Adelaide Radio 5AA on Thursday morning.
He pointed out that the opposition leader, Bill Shorten, was investigated over rape allegations in 2014.
“Bill Shorten was being investigated by the Victorian police for 12 months,” he said. “The government didn’t at any point say that he should stand down as leader of the opposition because that would be completely unfair, and when Bill Shorten was cleared of those charges, I think I was the first person to come out and say that I was pleased for Bill, because it must have been a very traumatic time for him and his family.”
Pyne said the government would reassess if Brough was charged for asking for the diary to be produced, which is in breach of section 70(1) of the Crimes Act.
“If there’s an end point when there’s a charge laid, that’s a whole different matter. But if, as I suspect, that doesn’t happen, then Labor will have been proven again to have overreached,” Pyne said.
In 2014 Brough was asked by a 60 Minutes journalist, Liz Hayes, if he had asked Ashby to procure Slipper’s diary.
“Yes, I did,” Brough answered.
On Tuesday Brough, under heavy questioning by Labor in question time, said Channel Nine had selectively edited the interview.
“In relation to the 60 Minutes interview, what was put to air was not the full question,” he said.
Channel Nine quickly put out the full transcript and the unedited video of the interview, which undermined Brough’s claims.
Labor said Brough’s questioning of the interview under false premises amounted to him misleading the parliament. Brough apologised for causing “confusion” but denied that he had misled parliament.
On Wednesday Brough denied altogether that he had asked for copies of Slipper’s diary, contradicting the on-camera statement he gave to 60 Minutes.
Dreyfus asked the same question as Hayes: “Did you ask James Ashby to procure copies of Peter Slipper’s diary for you?”
“No,” Brough said.
The minister is expected to be targeted again by Labor on the Slipper matter during Thursday’s question time.
