Labor Senator Murray Watt and Employment Minister Stuart Robert (Images: AAP)

Employment Minister Stuart Robert’s inability or unwillingness to disclose key financial details means he should be treated in the same way as former attorney-general Christian Porter who resigned last year over the operation of a blind trust set up to accept donations for his defamation proceedings against the ABC, Senate estimates has heard.

A Crikey investigation into Robert’s blind trust and investments raised a series of unanswered questions about the minister’s financial dealings, Labor Senator Murray Watt said. He asked Trade Minister Simon Birmingham why Robert had not met the same fate as Porter.

“Minister Porter could not say who those donors were,” Watt said. “It was, to use the prime minister’s words, the inability for minister Porter to be able to practically provide further information because of the blind nature of those arrangements that is what prevented minister Porter from conclusively ruling out a perceived conflict.

“Minister Robert sets up a blind trust but has yet to disclose the name of it. He doesn’t disclose the identity of the trustee. He doesn’t know what’s going on inside. He can’t rule out conflicts of interest. How is that different?”

The trust first came to light after David Hardaker’s series into Brother Stuie, his financial dealings and his powerful friends. The series found Robert, while working as minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) between 2019 and 2021, was a co-director of a company that made investments with and for Robert, and was registered at the same address as his co-director’s NDIS-linked companies.

He also had shares in a junior mining company called Atlas Iron, the sale of which led to a windfall for Robert, known as Brother Stuie by Prime Minister Scott Morrison for their shared Pentecostal beliefs. 

It’s not clear who manages Robert’s blind trust. His register of interests, thanks to the blind trust, is now a blank page.

Birmingham said that although he was sure Robert had complied with all relevant declarations to ensure a conflict of interest was avoided, the “fundamental point” of blind trusts were so that that a minister “can disclose all direct knowledge and responsibility and handling of assets they may own and invest those in another” that they didn’t have a line of sight over. 

Watt said he wasn’t advocating for parliamentary members to be banned from using blind trusts. 

Questions on whether the prime minister or his office discussed the blind trust with Robert — including the name of the blind trust or the identity of the trustee, and dates of advice or payments — were taken on notice by Birmingham. 

Labor’s spokesman on legal matters Mark Dreyfus and Greens Senator Larissa Waters backed calls last year for answers into the blind trust.