Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Ruston for the question, and I refer her back to my statement, where I have made it clear that I received information several days before the first public reports went to air. I did nothing with that information—absolutely nothing. I was asked to keep it to myself, and I did. I'm not going to stand here and go through private conversations that I had with the person who is at the centre of this at a very, very difficult time in her life—a person who has had her privacy breached in the most egregious way over the last two years.

There are, essentially, two things that have been alleged of me over the past week. The first is that I misled the Senate. I dealt with that in my statement today. Senator Reynolds and Senator Ruston were in the room when I explained that. They accepted that two years ago, and not once have either of them raised any concern about that with me. That's the first issue. The second issue that has been running in the media has been around my role in the compensation claim—an issue that has been incorrectly reported. These are the two issues that I have been hounded on—