Mr Barr has banned the Labor members of his Cabinet including gaming minister Gordon Ramsay from meeting with Clubs ACT, the industry group that represents almost three-quarters of Canberra's clubs. He has blackbanned the group after it ran a campaign against him at the last election, fighting his decision to allow poker machines in the casino.

The ban comes as the government is in the midst of consultation over significant changes to club taxes, poker machine numbers and other clubs policy.

On July 18, Fairfax Media put a series of question to Ms Leigh asking whether public servants were meeting Clubs ACT and how the public service was handling meeting requests, whether public servants were communicating or negotiating with Clubs ACT as policy was being developed and whether public servants were meeting the rival group preferred by Mr Barr, Canberra Community Clubs.

Fairfax also asked whether the public service had considered the question of how to handle the stoush between Clubs ACT, whether it had spoken with Mr Barr or his cabinet on the question, and whether there had been any direction from Mr Barr or his cabinet.

Ms Leigh sent the questions to a spokeswoman, who responded two weeks later. The answers, to be attributed to a spokeswoman rather than Ms Leigh, directly answered only the last question, with this: "No direction has been provided around narrowing the engagement focus."

Otherwise, the direct questions were avoided, the spokeswoman saying, "Public servants engage with a broad range of industry and community representatives to support the policy as well as regulatory work they do each day. Recently, public servants have been engaged extensively with all club licensees in relation to various policy issues on the government's gambling harm minimisation agenda. Submissions have been received from Clubs ACT and Canberra Community Clubs on behalf of some of these licensees. The ACT Public Service will continue to seek a diverse range of views."

Mr Ramsay also insists that he will continue to meet with individual clubs who belong to Clubs ACT, but not with the group itself.

The Justice and Community Safety directorate wrote to individual clubs about five weeks ago, inviting feedback on a ban on cash from eftpos machines and on how to reduce poker machine numbers fom 5000 to 4000, but the directorate did not invite comment from Clubs ACT. The approach flies in the face of years of close contact between Clubs ACT and the government and bureaucracy on policy development until last year's split.

Clubs ACT chief executive Gwyn Rees said the directorate had nevertheless responded to input from Clubs ACT and had met the group about May to discuss eftpos.

In contrast, the group has had almost no response from ministers. Mr Rees said he had written mostly recently to Mr Ramsay's office in the last fortnight offering to meet to discuss the group's new gambling harm taskforce and proposal for a government gambling contact officer. He had received an acknowledgement and an offer to "get back to you later".

He had also written to Mr Ramsay and Police Minister Mick Gentleman about the spate of burglaries in clubs late last week, with a response from Mr Gentleman's office, which contacted the police and asked for followup, but none from Mr Ramsay to date.