Michaelia Cash is “mortified” she missed the deadline to declare the purchase of an investment property, Malcolm Turnbull has said.
Cash bought an investment property in Floreat, Western Australia, which she declared on 21 January, then declared a Bankwest mortgage for an investment property on 21 February.
On Monday Fairfax Media reported that from the purchase date of 4 November, the employment minister took 78 days to declare the house and 109 days to declare the mortgage.
Under the rules, knowingly failing to update the register within 35 days can constitute a “serious contempt” of the Senate. The report said Cash had only declared the mortgage after she was asked about it on 20 February.
Asked about Cash’s failure to meet the declaration deadline on 3AW on Monday, the prime minister said she was “mortified” and had apologised.
Turnbull said Cash had told him she had settled on the property on 9 December and registered it on 21 January. “She was actually eight days late registering the acquisition of the property – not months late.”
He was disappointed she had missed the deadline, he said, but had accepted her apology. Cash “absolutely” acknowledged she had made a mistake, he said.
“Obviously she’d been away on holidays and so forth. The public hold us to very high standards and we have to comply with them.”
Turnbull said Cash was a hardworking and punctilious minister who “has had an oversight here and is very sorry about it”.
A spokeswoman for Cash said: “This was an inadvertent oversight by the minister, which was corrected two weeks ago. The minister regrets the oversight and has apologised for it.”
