Chief Minister Andrew Barr has cast doubt over whether Joy Burch will return to cabinet next year, saying he will "reflect on" the question of her ministerial future over the summer break.
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Mr Barr also continued his refusal to detail the nature of allegations against Ms Burch's chief of staff, Maria Hawthorne, on Thursday. Mr Barr believes a transcript of a conversation between Ms Hawthorne and CFMEU boss Dean Hall has been leaked to the media and said the nature of that conversation was part of the allegation being investigated by police. But he insisted the police concerns went well beyond the conversation.
"Obviously the leaking of a conversation though the royal commission processes has triggered a police investigation, but that's not the principal reason that the chief police officer came to see me," he told Fairfax Media. "But I'm not able to comment any further because it's a police evaluation … I've not seen the full details of that evaluation-slash-investigation."
Mr Hall called on Thursday for any covert recordings of his phone calls to be made public and said they would be "very benign".
"They've had that tape, and I am quite happy for it to be played. It's a tape involving me, let's get it out there," he said.
"It may have embarrassed the police, I don't know. If they're embarrassed I am sad for that because … I value the work they do in the community. I don't necessarily value the work they did at the royal commission but that's a different matter."
Mr Barr said he hoped the police investigation would reach a conclusion over summer, and it would inform his decisions about Ms Burch's ministerial future. Ms Burch was also using the summer break to consider her future, he said, but there was nothing she had said to him to suggest she would reconsider plans to stand for election again in 2016.
Asked whether she would return to the Assembly after the summer break, Mr Barr said, "I don't know. I have no comment to make on that. I would presume that Minister Burch would see out her parliamentary term, she's been preselected so I have no reason to think otherwise … There's nothing Joy has said in the past 24 hours that would indicate anything other than her continuing in politics."
Mr Barr said Ms Burch's actions were not the subject of any police investigation, but he conceded that the difficult working relationship between her office and ACT Policing was one of the reasons she had stood aside from the portfolio.
As to her performance as a cabinet minister more widely, Mr Barr said Ms Burch had had to deal with "some challenging issues".
"Yes, she has made errors and in one instance this year obviously I've had to correct an error in quite a public way," he said, referring to her December 2014 decision to allow $50 notes in poker machines, which Mr Barr reversed when it became public in January. "So no, she's not perfect, she'd be the first to acknowledge that, but equally she has suffered some unfair criticism at times.
"… I will be looking at the ministerial team over the summer period, there will be a reshuffle and I will look at the available options. Minister Burch may continue in the cabinet, she may not, that's a matter that she's going to reflect upon over the summer as well."
He rejected the suggestion that the CFMEU is too powerful or influential in the Labor Party, saying it was the sixth or seventh largest union affiliated to the party and the Community and Public Sector Union had five times the voting power. He also rejected the blame that has been levelled at the CFMEU for the effective dumping of Deputy Chief Minister Simon Corbell from the Left's endorsement at the recent preselection, resulting in Mr Corbell's resignation.
Mr Corbell also declined to elaborate on the allegations against Ms Burch's chief of staff.
"Clearly there are a range of issues that ACT Policing are looking at. I am not privy to the detail of those matters and nor should I be. Police investigations, police considerations are a matter for police," he said.
"I expect at the appropriate time I will be briefed on the progress of those but at this point of time I have not sought a briefing from the chief police officer.
He said Ms Burch had been "a very strong member of the government".
"The matters that are at play in relation to the police evaluation are broader than those matters than have been reported in the media."
Mr Corbell also denied the CFMEU had an outsized influence over the Barr government or ACT Labor.
"I don't think the CFMEU have any more or less influence than any other organisation in our city and we will continue to work very constructively with them," he said.
