Queensland's CCC retrieves 30k emails from Mark Bailey's deleted email account
Posted
A decision on whether to investigate Energy Minister Mark Bailey could take up to three months, after the Crime and Corruption Commission (CCC) retrieved more than 30,000 emails from his private account.
Earlier this month, the Opposition asked the CCC to look into Mr Bailey's use of non-government emails for official business.
The investigation was triggered when Mr Bailey closed the account mangocube6@yahoo.co.uk after The Australian newspaper made a right to information (RTI) request to find out whether he was using the address to talk to union officials.
Mr Bailey later said he was not aware of the paper's application when he shut the account.
He also said he did not see an email from one of his staff members about the application.
Mr Bailey told Parliament he deleted the account to ensure he could only be contacted on his ministerial email account.
In a statement, the CCC said its forensic computing experts were able to retrieve more than 30,000 emails with the cooperation of Mr Bailey.
"It is important to note many of these emails were from a period of time before [Mr] Bailey became an elected official and may not be relevant to the ongoing assessment," the CCC said.
Any investigation would not start until the emails had been reviewed, which could take until mid-June.
The CCC has told the director-general of Premier and Cabinet to work with the state archivist to determine if any of the emails constitute a "public record", and whether the records were dealt with correctly "to assist in determining if any criminal offences may have been committed."
"The CCC will determine whether to investigate this matter following advice from the state archivist and the director-general of Premier and Cabinet," the statement said.
It has requested a report by June 15.
Topics: parliament, government-and-politics, state-parliament, federal---state-issues, unions, brisbane-4000, qld
