Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Cunningham for her question. Misuse of public resources is of course a serious matter. With respect to investigation of any allegations of misuse of public resources, anybody who has any knowledge or any involvement or any connection with such alleged misuse has an obligation to make information available to investigating authorities to help clear up the matter.

I would remind members of an investigation that is currently occurring with respect to an email, which has now been determined to be a fake email, that was, according to the Australian Federal Police, created on a Treasury computer and emailed from Treasury to the computer at the home of Mr Grech. Although it was subsequently deleted from the Treasury computer, the AFP was able to determine the origins of the email. In response to these extraordinary events, the government has been quite prepared to make available all of its computer records with respect to the inquiries that are proceeding—by both the Auditor-General and the Australian Federal Police—in order to ensure that they can complete their investigations and that they can get all of the available information that they can in order to determine whether any offences have been committed and, if so, by whom. Unfortunately, the opposition thus far have not agreed to make available their email and computer records to the inquiry by the Australian Federal Police in order to assist in the investigation of these matters in order to determine the origins of the email and any parties involved in its dissemination or in any way connected to the email and its dissemination more broadly.

If you—

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