Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

I want to get onto his behaviour in terms of his failure to respond. This minister was the Minister for Justice when he refused to cooperate with the Australian Federal Police. The Australian Federal Police sought a witness statement from the then Minister for Justice and he failed to provide that witness statement. It wasn't only the Minister for Human Services, the then Minister for Justice, but also Minister Cash, who has been involved up to her neck in the unlawful behaviour involving her office, which leaked information about a police raid to the media. The fact is Minister Keenan and Minister Cash were both asked by the Australian Federal Police to provide witness statements. In evidence, on Monday, the Australian Federal Police confirmed that they did not receive witness statements from those ministers. Confirming that evidence was the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, who confirmed that one of the reasons they did not charge anybody in relation to the criminal breach—the unlawful behaviour of Minister Cash's office—was the lack of evidence, a deficiency in evidence. They said, in part, that deficiency went to the failure of people to provide witness statements when they were asked, and they included in that the two ministers—Minister Keenan and Minister Cash.

We have a situation where two cabinet ministers have refused to answer questions of the Australian Federal Police, which resulted in the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions not charging anyone for a criminal offence. It contributed in a failure to charge people. In fact, the minister knows—

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