Labor has called on Malcolm Turnbull to decide the future of Special Minister of State Mal Brough when he returns from Paris on Wednesday amid suggestions Mr Brough has misled the Parliament.
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Under sustained attack from the opposition in Parliament about his involvement in the Peter Slipper affair, Mr Brough used question time on Tuesday to accuse 60 Minutes of selectively editing an interview in which he admitted to asking former political staffer James Ashby to make copies of Mr Slipper's diary.
"In relation to the 60 Minutes interview, what was put to air was not the full question," Mr Brough told the House of Representatives.
But the Nine Network released the video-taped interview, which showed Mr Brough's claim that 60 Minutes had withheld part of the question to be false.
Shadow Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, who led the parliamentary attack, said after viewing the footage: "I don't see how this minister can keep his job after that. It is very clear what he said. It's a clear answer to a clear question and this was not edited as the minister suggested today."
60 Minutes released a transcript of the interview on Tuesday afternoon in which Mr Brough was asked, "Did you ask James Ashby to procure, um, copies of Peter Slipper's diary for you?"
"Yes I did," he replies.
"Why did you do that?"
"Because I believed Peter Slipper had committed a crime. I believed he was defrauding the Commonwealth and the courts have … the courts have fundamentally, have actually now proven that to be the case."
Labor is ratcheting up its pressure on the Member for Fisher, who is in charge of government integrity, after Australian Federal Police officers raided his home and the home of Mr Ashby in connection with their investigation into whether any laws were broken in copying and distributing the diary records of former speaker Mr Slipper.
In the second Labor-instigated matter of public importance debate in a week, Mr Dreyfus said Mr Turnbull should ask Mr Brough to stand aside while the matter is investigated.
"It's hard to overstate the seriousness of this and the ministerial standards are clear about these matters," he said.
On Tuesday, Mr Ashby used two interviews to claim it was Assistant Minister for Innovation Wyatt Roy who told him to copy the diaries.
"Wyatt said he didn't really know how to advise me and said he wanted to speak with Christopher Pyne," Mr Ashby told The Australian newspaper.
"He then called me back and I went and saw him in his office and he presented me a sheet of paper with instructions of what I should do, and one of the first steps was to get a copy of the office diary.
"That is how I came to be printing off a copy of the digital diary - it was evidence in my case."
In a second interview with 2GB's Alan Jones, Mr Ashby said, "Wyatt's never denied giving me any assistance in the beginning".
Mr Ashby added: "The problem was Wyatt gave me what he thought was the right information and said at that point, 'Mate if you do choose to go ahead and file a sexual harassment case, I don't want anything to do with it'."
Fairfax Media approached Mr Roy's office but they declined to comment.
In an interview with ABC radio in Brisbane on Monday, Mr Roy said he had not been contacted by the federal police.
"I've had a long chat about this in the media before," he said.
"As I said back then, James Ashby came to me with very serious allegations of sexual harassment, very upset.
"I found out how he could make a complaint, passed that on to him, suggested that he should talk to a lawyer and the next I heard about it was when I read it in the media.
"I haven't been contacted by the federal police.
"I think the Labor Party in the final sitting week of Parliament are keen to make a lot of political noise here but I haven't been contacted."
