WYATT Roy says he “doesn’t remember” whether he told James Ashby to make copies of Peter Slipper’s diary.

The Liberal Party rising star also claims he can’t recall whether he gave Mr Ashby a list of instructions after the former staffer came to him for advice alleging sexual harassment by Mr Slipper.

“This is a conversation of years ago; I don’t remember that specifically,” he told Sky News.

“But as I said I sat down with him. This has been on the public record for some time.

“I said, talk to the Department of Finance; diarise events that are happening; keep those text messages; that sort of thing that you would go through when you are making a complaint.

“I can’t remember exactly what I said years ago, but that was the nature of the conversation.”

Mr Ashby has previously said Mr Roy — who was promoted to Assistant Innovation Minister when Malcolm Turnbull became Prime Minister — “presented me a sheet of paper with instructions of what I should do, and one of the first steps was to get a copy of the office diary.”

Mr Ashby dropped a sexual harassment claim against Mr Slipper, his former boss, in 2012.

Mr Roy said he continued to believe Mr Slipper’s behaviour constituted sexual harassment.

“Peter Slipper, people can defend what he did, (but) I thought he was in a terrible position being in that office and suggested he makes a complaint, gets out of there and talks to a lawyer,” he said.

“It was a couple of conversations over a couple of days and I never heard from him again.”

Federal police last month raided Mr Ashby’s home looking for evidence of the diary and carried out a simultaneous raid on the home of Special Minister for State Mal Brough who has also be caught up in the affair.

It’s believed the warrants concerned unauthorised leaking of Mr Slipper’s diary between March and April 2012.

Since the raids, the Opposition has been calling on Mr Brough to resign or be sacked.

Pressure on the Prime Minister to stand Mr Brough aside escalated when Mr Brough appeared to give contradictory answered to the same question regarding his involvement in the scandal.