The Abbott government faces fresh questions about delays in correcting the record over its handling of the letter from Sydney siege gunman Man Haron Monis, after new documents revealed question time briefing notes were amended “to reflect – but not highlight” the error.

Internal emails and notes provided to a Senate inquiry also reveal the Attorney General’s Department knew as far back as February that it had failed to provide the correspondence to the Sydney siege review team.

And they indicate the office of the prime minister, Tony Abbott, was aware of the error three days before the parliamentary record was corrected on 4 June.

Labor has been highly critical of the government for waiting until the final day of a parliamentary sitting fortnight to retract the previous claims, and argues the new documents are evidence of “a deliberate cover-up”.

The issue relates to a letter the siege gunman wrote to the attorney general, George Brandis, in October, two months before the deadly attack in the Lindt cafe, to ask whether it was legal to contact the leader of Islamic State.

Brandis and the foreign affairs minister, Julie Bishop, said on 28 May that Monis’s letter had been given to the joint review conducted by the joint federal and New South Wales government and completed in January. They were relying on comments made a day earlier by Katherine Jones, the deputy secretary of the Attorney General’s Department.

The documents, provided by the Attorney General’s Department to a Senate committee, provide an insight into the talks that occurred between departments and ministerial offices before the formal correction was made on 4 June.

On Monday 1 June, the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet provided a briefing note to the Attorney General’s Department (AGD) that asserted: “AGD never provided the Monis/Brandis letter to the Martin Place review team. The team was never aware of the existence of the letter.”

In an accompanying email at 12.15pm, the deputy secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Allan McKinnon, mentioned the Prime Minister’s Office: “PMO says that AG can answer any questions on this issue now that they know the review team didn’t receive it.”

The Attorney General’s Department asked the attorney general’s office at 12.39pm the same day “whether any updates are required” to the question time brief about the Monis correspondence “in light of any discussions this morning”. The department was told: “Update not necessary, we’re just leaving it how it is.”

The following day – Tuesday, 2 June – the Attorney General’s Department distributed an updated question time brief. Question time briefs are prepared for ministers to draw upon in answering questions in parliament.

“The document has been amended to reflect – but not highlight – that not ALL documents held by AGD were provided to the siege review. Happy to discuss,” the department said in the email to Brandis’s office on 2 June.

Brandis has previously defended the delay in correcting the record. He said he was advised on 1 June “that it appeared” that the department’s advice about the correspondence was wrong, prompting him to ask his top bureaucrat, Chris Moraitis, to “establish the facts”.

Brandis’s office received Moraitis’s report by email at 1.09pm on 4 June. Brandis and Bishop corrected the record later that afternoon.



In the report, Moraitis said the Attorney General’s Department had handed documents to the siege review in January. He revealed that “officers in the department” had become aware on 2 February that Monis’s letter and the department’s reply “had been inadvertently omitted from the correspondence provided to the review”.

“The officers became aware of this omission following the Australian federal police notifying the department that it had come into possession of the letter and the reply while making inquiries,” Moraitis wrote.

He said a departmental officer contacted an officer in the review team at the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet on 2 February to advise them of the omission. “The review team member advised that the text of the review had already been finalised and the department therefore did not provide the two documents,” Moraitis said.

Labor’s Senate leader, Penny Wong, said the new evidence was damning.

“We already knew that government ministers had misled the Australian parliament. We now know there has been a deliberate cover-up,” Wong said.

“The prime minister’s office, the attorney general and the foreign minister’s office were aware for a full parliamentary week that Ms Bishop and the Attorney-General’s Department had misled the parliament and chose to do nothing.

“Wilfully misleading the parliament is a serious offence – the prime minister must explain the actions of his ministers and staff.”

Abbott’s spokesman defended the government’s handling of the issue.



“As soon as it became clear that there was a possible problem with the testimony of the officer from the Attorney General’s Department, a thorough review was undertaken by that department,” he said.



“As soon as that review was completed, the record was corrected by the attorney general and by the foreign minister.”



Abbott’s spokesman pointed to comments by the Asio chief, Duncan Lewis, that the letter had been handled appropriately.

The spokesman added: “The secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet [Michael Thawley] has said that the access to that letter would have made no difference to the inquiry that was conducted by him and the secretary of the NSW premier’s department.”



Guardian Australia has submitted questions to Brandis’s office and the Attorney General’s Department about the new documents.

