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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 7 Hansard (19 June) . . Page.. 1896 ..

Mr Whitecross: She tabled them. They were hers when she brought them in here.

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, I heard Mr Wood and the last few speakers on the other side in silence. I would ask for a bit of courtesy. I am summing up. The fact is that Mrs Carnell did not produce the figures. Mrs Carnell asked for the figures herself while she was in opposition and obtained some of them from Mr Berry's department. We did not create these figures. They were already in existence at the time that Mr Berry was in office. They were produced by Mr Berry's department while the former Government was in office. The fact is that those figures were produced. We on this side of the chamber used them. We thought that they were accurate. We were surprised by the figures in some ways. We believed that if they had been produced by the department they must be true - and they were not true.

The suggestion was made by Mr Moore and by Ms Tucker that Mrs Carnell had also published inaccurate figures and she must have known that they were inaccurate. Mrs Carnell was the first Minister to ask how the figures could be accurate. She went to the department and said, "These figures do not seem to make much sense. Can you check them, please?". They were checked and she discovered the error. She brought the error to the attention of the Assembly. She discovered the error in the figures that Mr Berry had produced. To say that Mrs Carnell has perpetuated the misleading is untrue. Mrs Carnell was the first Minister to ask how those figures came about and to have them checked and to discover that they were inaccurate.

Mr Speaker, this Assembly seems to be applying the principle that the Government should meet a higher standard of accuracy in information provision than the Opposition. That is most unfair. If this place believes that all governments, past or present, deserve to meet a certain standard, then it should accept that Ministers who do not meet that standard should be censured, whether or not they are in government or opposition at the time. To censure Ministers in this Government when in precisely the same circumstances those opposite do not face the same sanction is to set a different standard for each side of the chamber.

We made allegations yesterday about cooking the books. We have not repeated them today, because we give Mr Berry the benefit of the doubt that he may not have known about the figures in his department. He has still come to this place and not conceded that the figures are accurate, despite hearing Dr Hughes this morning on the radio. He still will not concede that the figures, as tabled by the Chief Minister, are accurate. I suspect that he never will in this place. His colleagues are prepared to half-apologise on his behalf.

Those people opposite and the press gallery can testify that Mr Berry ran around for two weeks in this place saying, "Kate Carnell is a liar. We have got her on toast on this matter. Kate Carnell made false allegations. She is cooking the books. We can prove that". He was producing figures and urging people to make those sorts of claims in the media - as some of them did, to their discredit. He ran around doing that for several weeks. Where is the apology for having misled the public? Where is the apology for that?

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