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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 4 Hansard (25 June) . . Page.. 1054 ..

MR SMYTH: Mr Speaker, I thank the member for his question. I welcome our visitors from New Zealand. I guess that you would have some of the same problems with regional attitudes to Wellington as your capital. As I said, I had been told that that was in the report. I do not have a copy of the report with me; but I am certainly - - -

Mr Kaine: You should have had it when you answered the question, because you were wrong.

MR SMYTH: No, I am not wrong, because, speaking specifically in regard to the entire survey and the use of the "Feel the Power" slogan, that is clearly the responsibility of the Chief Minister. But what you did was ask in relation to the use of the "Feel the Power" slogan in regard to the numberplates, and I answered in relation to the numberplates.

MR KAINE: Mr Speaker, I have a supplementary question. First of all, my question focused on numberplates; but it opened with a broader preamble, and that is the question that the Minister answered, and he was dead wrong. The Minister does not seem to be very accurate in his comments, because in his response he also said - and I am quoting from the Hansard:

As I think Disraeli first said and Mark Twain paraphrased, there are lies, damned lies and statistics.

He was quite wrong. It was actually Mark Twain that said it first, and Disraeli was paraphrasing him - - -

MR SPEAKER: Order! Ask a supplementary question without preamble.

MR KAINE: What he actually said was, "There are three kinds of lies - - -

Mr Moore: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: Mr Kaine has been in this house since self-government. A preamble to a supplementary question - - -

MR SPEAKER: Sit down.

MR KAINE: What was said, Mr Speaker, actually was, "There are three kinds of lies - lies, damned lies and statistics". I ask the Minister: Which category are we dealing with here?

MR SMYTH: Mr Speaker, the origin of that quote, who first used it, is often the subject of debate. This issue was raised last year in relation to something that one of the Ministers I was working for at the time wanted to use in the house. We actually had the Parliamentary Library do some research, and they did suggest to us that it is Disraeli who actually gets the credit for coining that short phrase. So, in that regard, one of us has got it wrong, and I am happy to dig out my advice from the Parliamentary Library.

Mr Kaine: I have had a look at the Parliamentary Library. Have you?

MR SPEAKER: Order!

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