Federal Liberal MP Warren Entsch is refusing to confirm or deny that he personally complained to a business after it stopped employing his wife to run programs in Indigenous communities.
This was despite him personally announcing that he had helped arrange a $5 million federal government funded project for My Pathway to build sea walls in the Torres Strait with a local land council. However, the ABC has spoken to a senior source who worked with My Pathway, and while not authorised to speak publicly, they have confirmed Mr Entsch raised the issue of Ms Entsch's employment with the business.The source said the discussion related to the business opting to cease engaging Ms Entsch to run a pottery and women's empowerment program in the Indigenous community of Doomadgee, in north-western Queensland, in 2019.
"I was not aware originally when Yolonde was beginning to contract with My Pathway," he said in the statement.An ABC investigation found the details in material promoting Mr Entsch's wife Yolonde as the LNP candidate for the state seat of Cairns.An LNP spokesperson for Ms Entsch said that questions about Mr Entsch's register of interest were a matter for the Leichhardt MP.
She later was engaged by the company to run programs in Indigenous communities, including making hygiene kits – called Moon Sick Care Bags – for disadvantaged Papua New Guinea women. Late Thursday she issued a statement saying: "Over more than a decade I've delivered charitable work to help the most vulnerable members of our Far North Queensland community."