Embattled Queensland government minister Mark Bailey has offered a public apology for his use of a private email account for official government business.
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But the contrition only extends so far, with Mr Bailey refusing to release hundreds more emails from the account, or respond to calls for him to resign over the long-running saga.
The Labor transport minister, first elected to parliament in 2015, blamed his mistake of corresponding with an Electrical Trades Union official when he was energy minister in 2016 on inexperience.
"It was a first-term minister mistake from a rookie MP," Mr Bailey said in his first press appearance in a fortnight.
"I freely admit that in hindsight I would have done it differently."
However Mr Bailey has refused to help clear the air over the issue and publicly release around 600 emails from his private account - mangocube6@yahoo.co.uk.
Mr Bailey and Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk claim he is prevented from releasing the emails as the documents have been requested under Right to Information laws.
Requests for the information came after Ms Palaszczuk last week recommended journalists use the Right to Information process if they wanted to access the emails.
However, even if Mr Bailer were prevented from releasing the emails due to current RTI requests, he could still table the emails in parliament where he is protected by parliamentary privilege, but he ruled that out on Monday.
Mr Bailey has also defended the hiring of ETU-backed candidate Mark Algie for the Energy Queensland board after his CV was emailed to him after the cut-off date.
It came as Ms Palaszczuk released the government's new ministerial guidelines which were sparked by Mr Bailey's ETU correspondence.
The premier said the new rules would prevent a repeat of the saga.
"I think this is a very clear line in the sand," Ms Palaszczuk said. "Everybody has now been briefed, everyone knows their obligations and there is no doubt whatsoever."
Opposition Leader Deb Frecklington said Ms Palaszczuk's refusal to axe Mr Bailey rendered the guidelines irrelevant before they were introduced.
"The premier didn't enforce the old guidelines for Bailey, so how can Queenslanders trust that she'll enforce these new ones?" Ms Frecklington said.
"We've got a minister who has lied, and the premier needs to sack him."
The new rules specifically ban ministers from using private email for government business, but do allow a window of 20 days to forward an email on from their private accounts to their official accounts if someone contacts them privately on official business.
The changes also ban any official business being conducted through private messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger, Snapchat or WhatsApp.
Australian Associated Press
