Chapman faced questions yesterday, insisting she was unaware a property she inherited from her late brother in 2017 would be impacted by the proposed Kangaroo Island Plantation Timbers project – which she unilaterally ruled out in August despite departmental advice that it could go ahead, with caveats.

“I think I have made it very clear at all material times, as has been well known to this parliament, that I have inherited and have land on Kangaroo Island,” Chapman told the hearing.

“There’s been a forest [adjacent the property] owned by a party independent of KIPT [which] has been there for 30 or 40 years and it’s still there… the first time I heard about the issue of whether KIPT have or are about to enter into any contract with that property is what you have told me today.”

Chapman has long denied an actual or perceived conflict, and has previously told parliament that she did not own land near, or that would be impacted by, the proposed port.

After the hearing, Labor frontbencher Tom Koutsantonis said in a statement that Chapman “has no choice but to resign, after giving utterly unsatisfactory answers to serious questions about perceived or real conflicts of interest and allegations of misleading parliament”.

“If she won’t resign, Steven Marshall should sack her,” he said.

But in a statement of her own, Chapman insisted the committee had “failed to find evidence to support its wild and inflammatory claims, and, above all else, failed the people of South Australia”.

She accused committee chair Andrea Michaels of “stooping to a new low” by inquiring into land transfers she had made to her family, “implying this was related to my decision [but] knowing the same related to my brother’s suicide in 2017 and the conclusion of legal proceedings concerning his estate”.

“While Labor’s legal costs to the taxpayer will be massive – it is nothing compared to the toll this despicable mudslinging exercise has taken on members of my family,” she said.

“I forgive, but I do not forget.”