This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Michaelia Cash has “unreservedly withdrawn” her controversial remarks about Bill Shorten’s female staff, although she has accused the Labor senator Doug Cameron of “bullying” her during an Senate estimates hearing, and provoking the incendiary response.

Cash’s decision to withdraw her comments followed 24 hours of political brawling about the extraordinary inference the jobs and innovation minister made on Wednesday.

Cameron triggered the outburst, questioning Cash about staff movements in her office after police raids last year involving the Australian Workers’ Union.

Michaelia Cash makes 'outrageous slurs' against women in Shorten's office Read more

The line of inquiry prompted a response from the strife-prone minister in which she threatened to “name every young woman in Mr Shorten’s office over whom rumours in this place abound”.

Liberals attempted to argue that Cash had responded in the way she had because she believed Cameron was on a fishing exercise, seeking to open up a new front after the reporting of an intimate relationship between the former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce and his former staffer Vikki Campion – a contention Cameron categorically denies.

With Labor on the warpath, senior government players dug in behind Cash on Thursday. Labor leader Bill Shorten demanded an apology for the estimates outburst, but Malcolm Turnbull told parliament during question time that Cash had been “bullied and provoked” into the estimates meltdown.

The home affairs minister, Peter Dutton, also attempted to return fire on the Labor leader, using a radio interview to declare “there’s a history of problems in Bill Shorten’s personal life” while claiming he was not moralising about personal behaviour.

Cash eventually fronted an Senate estimates hearing on Thursday afternoon and said she withdrew her comments unreservedly. The minister’s arrival at the hearing was obscured by a whiteboard positioned by parliamentary security guards.

The incident has already been the subject of several complaints to the sergeant-at-arms, both from the media, who were positioned in a permitted area in Mural Hall and from Cash, who said they were filming down a corridor into a private area.

Play Video 0:30 Michaelia Cash hides from the media behind a whiteboard – video

On Thursday afternoon, Cash claimed that she had already withdrawn the offensive remarks before doing so again, without reservation. “I withdrew them yesterday and I will withdraw them unreservedly”.

Cash said she had made the remark in response to a “highly inappropriate comment” and called on Cameron to “withdraw the insinuations he made about my staff”. “Doug Cameron is nothing more or less than a bully – and that was on display yesterday.”

Privacy of staffers is a political sensitive issue in the febrile parliamentary environment after Joyce’s resignation and changes to the ministerial code of conduct to ban sex between ministers and their staff.

Labor has been pursuing for some time questions about the number of staff who left the Cash office since her former senior media adviser, David De Garis, who resigned after the revelation he was involved in tipping off the media about police raids on the Australian Workers’ Union.

Australia bans ministers from having sex with staff after Barnaby Joyce scandal Read more

A number of staff have left the Cash office.

With the controversy about last year’s AWU raids still live, in question time on Thursday, the human services minister Michael Keenan was forced to repeatedly deny a report in Buzzfeed that his office was involved in the tipoff to the media in October when he was justice minister.

Evidence by the Australian federal police to estimates this week suggests they have interviewed staff in multiple ministerial offices as part of an investigation into the incident.

That evidence broadened the search for potential sources of the leak about the raids, leading to Buzzfeed’s revelation on Wednesday that at least one journalist claims to have been tipped off by Keenan’s office.

A spokesman for Keenan told Guardian Australia: “Neither the minister or anyone in his office informed media outlets prior to the execution of search warrants.”

Michaelia Cash aide resigns over AWU raid tip-off to media Read more

The spokesman repeatedly refused to answer questions about whether the denial referred to Keenan’s current staff or his staff at the time of the raid in October.

Asked in question time if it was accurate he and his office were not involved in the tip-off, Keenan said “yes” on three separate occasions but declined to say what steps he had taken to substantiate the claim.

He also deflected two questions about whether he or his office informed “anyone other than the office of the prime minister about the raid ... including but not limited to the office of minister Cash”.

In October, Cash denied that her office was involved in the media tip-off five times before she was forced to change her evidence to Senate estimates to concede that De Garis had been involved.