The assistant health minister, Fiona Nash, remains under pressure over claims she misled the Senate while trying to explain why she and her chief of staff controversially intervened to take down a food rating website.



The chief of staff, Alastair Furnival, resigned on Friday after being embroiled in allegations of conflict of interest over links with a firm lobbying for the junk food industry.

But the Labor party says Nash still has to explain why she told the Senate she had the “unanimous support” of the state ministers jointly responsible for the health star rating scheme for a new “cost benefit analysis”. The fact the analysis was not finished was a key reason she gave for instructing Furnival to take down the supporting website on 7 February.

The Tasmanian health minister, Michelle O’Byrne, who attended the meeting, told Guardian Australia Nash was being “misleading”.

After losing a push for the ministerial forum to agree to a full regulatory impact statement – because of concerns that it would delay the food labelling scheme – Nash simply informed the meeting her department would be doing a “broad cost benefit analysis”.

“It is correct that no members of the forum … argued against the commonwealth carrying out the work but it is incorrect to suggest the steps had the full backing of the forum … The majority of members were clear in their desire that front-of-pack labelling not be delayed in any way,” O’Byrne said.

“There was no discussion about whether the implementation of the health star system would be halted or delayed until the analysis was completed. To imply the forum accepted that the implementation and publicising of the health star system be delayed until the analysis was completed is misleading,” she said.

Nash told the Senate one reason she and Furnival had intervened to take down the website was that the federal and state ministerial forum in December had taken “a unanimous decision to do an extensive cost-benefit analysis” and it was therefore “premature to have the website live until this report was completed”.

Minutes from that forum meeting confirm O’Byrne’s account – that Nash unsuccessfully demanded a new regulatory impact statement (RIS) be undertaken before the labelling system took effect and then unilaterally informed the meeting she would be asking her department to undertake a “broader” cost-benefit analysis.

Five states are understood to have opposed the minister’s proposal on the grounds an RIS would inevitably delay the scheme’s implementation. Nash lost a vote on the proposal 5-4. She was backed by Victoria, New South Wales and the Northern Territory. Among those successfully opposing her were the Labor governments in Tasmania and South Australia, which are about to face elections.

State governments and consumer groups believe Nash is deliberately delaying the “healthy star” food labelling until the two state elections in the hope they will give opponents of the scheme the numbers to defeat it in the ministerial forum.

The only contract relating to the health star system on the government’s Austender site is one for $73,000 with PricewaterhouseCoopers to develop a business case. It began in November and had finish date of 31 January. The new cost benefit analysis is being done by the department and appears to be an entirely separate process.

The opposition health spokeswoman, Catherine King, said: “The buck stops with Senator Nash … the resignation of her chief of staff … does not absolve her of her responsibility to fully explain her knowledge of the conflict and her decision to delay the rollout of the health star rating system.”

After a week of growing parliamentary pressure, Nash issued a one-line statement on Friday saying she had accepted Furnival’s resignation “with regret” and thanking him for his service.

The minister had been forced to correct a statement to the Senate earlier in the week in which she asserted that Furnival had “no connection whatsoever” with the lobbying company Australian Public Affairs (APA).

Nash later conceded Furnival was a “shareholder in the lobbying firm owned by his wife, Tracey Cain”.

APA has acted for Cadbury’s parent company, the snack food giant Mondelez, as well as the soft drink industry group the Australian Beverages Council. Furnival was once chairman of APA and chief economist for Cadbury, but Nash has insisted there is no conflict of interest because he “receives no income” from a “shareholding” in his wife’s lobbying firm and the firm has promised not to lobby her or the health minister, Peter Dutton. Guardian Australia has established he remains a director of one of the firms that makes up the APA partnership.

In a separate statement, Furnival said he had resigned to avoid the “political distraction” of the “smear campaign” against him, but also insisted there had been no conflict of interest.

“This afternoon I have tendered my resignation as chief of staff to the assistant minister for health. I have done so with a clear conscience but with recognition that this political attack is a distraction from the important health issues being effectively addressed by this government,” he said.

“I … appropriately managed potential conflicts. I resign in the knowledge that neither I, nor my wife, has acted improperly. I regret any embarrassment that may have been caused to the minister and especially to my wife, who has been dragged into this political smear campaign.”

Cain, Furnival’s wife and APA owner, said in a statement on Wednesday that “since his resignation and appointment as a chief of staff with a commonwealth minister [Furnival] has drawn no salary, dividend or profit share from this company. Following his appointment, the process began to transfer Alastair’s shareholding to me as his former co-director. Since last September, Australian Public Affairs has not made representations to either health minister, their offices, or the Health Department; and has made no representations to any other minister of the commonwealth in relation to the health portfolio.”

The government’s “standards for ministerial staff” require that staff “divest themselves, or relinquish control, of interests in any private company or business and/or direct interest in any public company involved in the area of their ministers’ portfolio responsibilities”.

APA is a partnership registered with NSW Fair Trading, whose records show APA’s partners are three companies – APA Pty Ltd, Strategic Issues Management Pty Ltd and Centre for Litigation Communications Pty Ltd.

Australian Securities and Investment Commission documents show that Furnival is a director of Strategic Issues Management along with Cain, who is also secretary.