James Ashby’s case against Peter Slipper and the Commonwealth, and the associated infusion of media and political involvement, would have to be one of the grubbiest assaults on a government in recent memory. Importantly, Ashby’s allegations on 60 Minutes show that the original claims of abuse of process, which were dismissed on appeal by the full federal court, are actually alive and kicking.

The sequence of events is well known. The sexual harassment claims against the Speaker were struck out in December 2012 by Justice Steven Rares. He found that the real purpose of the litigation was to bring down the Speaker and damage the minority government, and should never have been brought in the court.

That was subsequently overturned by a full court majority in February. It left us with two judges saying this was more about politics than the law, and two saying this was more about the law than politics. Contrary to spin from the Ashby camp, the full court made no findings of fact about his allegations. That was to be determined by a trial that never happened because the complainant withdrew from the contest.

The main game was always about politics. The litigation was a means by which maximum distress could be inflicted on the minority government, and Liberal politicians were in there with their ears back.

Ashby told the 60 Minutes audience on Sunday night that Tony Abbott’s frontbench attack dog Christopher Pyne knew of his sexual harassment allegations against Slipper and knew about the staffer’s proposed litigation against the speaker. He had spoken directly to the then shadow minister in his parliamentary office.

As Ashby agreed last night, in a carefully choreographed interview with Liz Hayes, this information was “dynamite in Pyne’s hands”.

Former parliamentary speaker Peter Slipper arrives at the magistrates court in July 2014. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP

According to Ashby, in order to get the case up and running, Pyne promised lawyers and a political job for the young staffer turned victim. Those allegations were never before the courts and, if proven, might have weighed heavily on the outcome, particularly as Pyne allegedly said: “If you discuss or tell anyone we’ve had this discussion I’ll be forced to come out publicly and call you a pathological liar.”

This is Pine-O-Clean extra strength.

On cue, Pyne denies Ashby’s claim that he was a party to this squalid enterprise. He chose his words carefully – that he had no “specific knowledge of the allegations”, which leaves wide open the state of his knowledge about the allegations in general. “The first I knew that he was suing Mr Slipper was when I read it in the newspapers”. Again, this can be read as simply a matter of denying he knew when the litigation originally commenced. There is plenty of wriggle room in Pyne’s response.

We know the abrasive Mal Brough is knee deep in this. He was salivating over the prospect of taking Slipper’s seat at the next election (which he did). We know other leading lights in the Queensland Liberal National party had been consulted by Ashby as to what course of action he should take – including machine man David Russell QC. It was Russell who contradicted Pyne, and said there would be no legal assistance provided and no guarantee of jobs.

Yet mysteriously, Abbott insists he was unaware of the machinations surrounding Ashby’s complaint against the speaker, or the legwork being done by his favourite newspaper, the Daily Telegraph. In a piece of amazing synchronicity, Abbott’s press release calling for Slipper’s resignations was on the stocks the moment the Telegraph went to press with the story. Some metadata experts suggest it was even prepared before the story hit the streets.

Ashby now has seriously upset the conga line of Coalition denialists. As if we needed more evidence that this litigation was critically important to the mud wrestling antics of the then opposition, there was the incandescent dismay of shadow attorney general George Brandis when the commonweath settled its part of the Ashby proceedings in September 2012, for $50,000. Throughout the case Brandis had been venturing his trademark bombast, but the settlement was too much. He said at the time: “This is further evidence of how dishonest and slippery this government is.”

That’s pretty shameless, when there’s now a suggestion that a front bench colleague had been promising the world to the applicant.

While there are many holes in Pyne’s denial and the uncomfortably eroding rebuttal from Abbott, there were just as many questions left unanswered by the relatively patsy interview on 60 Minutes.

For instance, why did Ashby first go to baby parliamentarian Wyatt Roy with his complaint about Slipper? Once Russell said there would be no legal assistance or no guarantee of jobs, why didn’t Ashby go back to Pyne and demand to know what was going on? How did he get the job with Slipper in the first place, and what was the state of his knowledge about the Speaker’s sleaze factor?

There is the smell of the chequebook hovering over this story. The PR man for Harmers Workplace Lawyers, who have been acting for Ashby on a no-win, no-fee basis, is Anthony McClellan, a former Logie winning chief of production at 60 Minutes. It is possible that McClellan might have been able to stitch up a few dollars for Sunday night’s Ashby show.

Somewhere in the federal court, there is an application from June that the commonwealth fork out $1m for Ashby’s legal costs. We asked McClellan to help us with our inquiries, but he says he is unable to talk about it at the moment.

