Qld minister defends personal email use

Queensland Environment Minister Steven Miles says the opposition is "grasping at straws" by attacking him for using a private email account.

Queensland's Liberal National Party Opposition are calling for Environment Minister Steven Miles to stand down over his use of a private email account, but Dr Miles has accused them of "grasping at straws".

The Australian has reported a right-to-information application for his email activity, lodged by the state opposition, showed he had sent documents relating to cabinet discussions to his private account in October and March.

Dr Miles clarified on Friday that he had sent three emails to himself, one of which was just the word "test" while another was documents he wanted to print out for emergency meetings during the response to Cyclone Debbie earlier this year.

The third was a draft email Dr Miles was going to send to help a constituent of LNP Member for Gympie Tony Perrett have a grazing issue resolved.

"The three emails that have been released, to my knowledge there are no others, it's not something I do regularly, I think anyone would understand that in a rush to get to a disaster committee meeting I wanted to print a document," Dr Miles said.

"This is an entirely appropriate use of email, and I think the opposition are grasping at straws here."

Dr Miles said he believed the action was within the guidelines set by Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk earlier this year, after fellow cabinet minister Mark Bailey was referred to the corruption watchdog for his use and subsequent deletion of a private email account.

The probe into Mr Bailey was launched following reports he received emails from the Electrical Trades Union secretary over his concerns about a now-abandoned superannuation merger.

Opposition frontbencher Scott Emerson said Dr Miles had breached those guidelines and had to face consequences.

"The test on this is the premier, she gave very clear instructions to her ministers, 'don't use private email accounts,' Steven Miles ignored that direction," Mr Emerson told reporters on Friday.

"The other thing of concern is that we know there's been a number of leaks of cabinet documents from the environment department at the same time Steven Miles was using his private email account."

Mr Emerson stopped short of saying the LNP would refer the matter to the Crime and Corruption Commission, adding it would be up to the premier to decide how to deal with the issue.


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Source: AAP



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