Christian Porter was told a lot more about the State Government’s bold but disastrous bid to seize control of the Bell Group assets than he first revealed.

Mr Porter played the role of envoy between the WA and the Commonwealth, as the Barnett Government sought to prevent its Bell Act being constitutionally challenged by the Federal Government, which it was, defeated in the High Court in May.

On November 30, Mr Porter, the Federal Social Services Minister, told Parliament that between a meeting with Insurance Commission of WA chief executive Rod Whithear in March last year and receiving an email from the WA State Solicitor’s office a year later, he did not receive “any further information” about the Bell litigation.

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The former State treasurer and attorney-general said that in that period he had not been involved in any talks with former Federal treasurer Joe Hockey’s office and WA ministers, saying this was his “absolute best recollection”, aided by a search of his diary.

But in a letter to the Clerk of the House of Representatives, hand-delivered late on Wednesday, three weeks after addressing Parliament on the issue, Mr Porter revealed a substantial trail of correspondence with his office about the Bell issue in that 12-month period.

He said that between his meeting with Mr Whithear on March 18 last year and March 2, he had received two emails from the Federal Treasurer’s office.

He had received a copy of the second reading speech and explanatory memorandum of the WA Bell Act after its introduction and a copy of the letter sent by Mr Hockey to his State counterpart Mike Nahan.

And Mr Porter said he also received two background briefing notes from the WA Government. He said a search of his emails “also indicates I was not provided with a draft of the Bell legislation as was asserted”.

This contradicts what Dr Nahan told State Parliament on March 24 — that Mr Porter was shown a draft Bill “and we showed it to the Commonwealth”.