It has taken a cruel and untamed global disaster to draw attention from the government’s record of questionable integrity standards.

That record is bulging with episodes of controversial conduct, and they are not going to disappear into post-coronavirus history.

The unresolved issues surrounding the allocation of $102m in sports grants, and the role of the prime minister’s office in taking over the distribution of funds, is still the subject of a Senate committee inquiry.

Scott Morrison might have thrown the former sports minister Bridget McKenzie under a cricket pitch roller in the hope of settling the matter but there continue to be troubling blank spaces in the history of the controversy and associated claims of political partiality in handing out cash.

On a lesser scale but still disturbing, inquiries are under way into the unauthorised distribution of Malcolm Turnbull’s autobiography by a senior member of Morrison’s staff. Did the prime minister get a copy?

The government has proudly declared its efforts to protect copyright, and the piracy of the Turnbull book casts doubt on that boast.

In these two matters, among others, Morrison and ministers have dismissed questions of detail, most recently citing the business of fighting a pandemic as leaving no room for other matters.

But if the prime minister wants to ignore uncomfortable issues – and he has practised this strategy since he was immigration minister – there are others prepared to talk.

That has been highlighted by the police report revealed on Monday contradicting statements by the energy minister, Angus Taylor.

Since last September Taylor has insisted that his office obtained City of Sydney council travel figures he used to attack the Sydney lord mayor, Clover Moore, from the council’s website.

He has publicly acknowledged those figures were inaccurate. He had claimed in a letter to Moore, leaked to the Daily Telegraph, that the council had spent $15m on travel, when the figure was about $6,000.

Taylor apologised to Moore but insisted the data was innocently sourced from her council’s website.

The police investigation has cast doubt on that. A scouring of the council sites did not “provide any evidence of the document being downloaded by Mr Taylor’s office”, NSW police said in a response to questions in state parliament estimates.

The questions remain: so who downloaded it elsewhere? Was it forged? And if so, by whom?

Labor intends using Taylor’s own words in a grilling planned for the return of parliament in May.

Significantly, these words were used in parliament last year and could become the basis for allegations Taylor committed the serious breach of misleading the House.

On 24 October he replied to a Labor question in the House of Representatives: “As I said, the document was drawn from the City of Sydney website and it was publicly available.

“I reject the bizarre suggestions and assertions [of forgery] being peddled by those opposite.”

On 25 November Labor’s Mark Butler referred to those comments and asked whether the minister stood by his insistence that the dodgy figures had been taken directly from the council website.

“I’ve already dealt with that,” Taylor said, referring to his past remarks.

He added: “Labor and their mates have an insatiable appetite for gossip and smear. Their hypocrisy knows no bounds.”

Well, that didn’t last long – barely six months.

It could well be Taylor genuinely believed the massively inflated figures were found where he said, and were used in good faith. But they were not, and their appearance from nowhere invites further questions.

Morrison gives a weary shake of the head and a hint of disgust when reporters ask questions about partisan politics rather than Covid-19.

And no doubt the pandemic has occupied him for the past two months like no other issue has or probably ever will.

But the nation is incrementally moving back to normal activities and priorities.

And that will mean, soon, the government will be held to account on the normal standards of integrity voters expect to be enforced.