Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 8 Hansard (28 October) . . Page.. 2367 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

accurately portrayed the situation to the Assembly and, incidentally, to the members of the community through the pages of the Canberra Times with the quotation of figures in this way. Mr Speaker, I would argue that he has not.

It is a grossly misleading statement to suggest that there has been an increase in outages under privatisation in Victoria. No fair reading of those figures, either from the Regulator-General or from the Electricity Supply Association, or from any other source that I am aware of, can support that statement. (Extension of time granted) I thank members, Mr Speaker. I will be quite brief. No reading of those figures in any way supports the claims made by Mr Corbell in the Assembly yesterday. It is simply unfair and untrue to state that about this particular debate.

I and Mr Smyth, and Ms Carnell, have come into this place on several occasions in the last few months and retracted and apologised when we have used words in an unarguably loose way, such as when we used the word "blocks" when we should have used the word "leases" or vice versa.

Mr Stanhope: You will choke.

Mr Berry: You grow grass on blocks and you sign leases. There is a difference.

MR SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR HUMPHRIES: It is funny how we have this brave face, Mr Speaker, when it comes to a censure motion of members opposite, but it is all very grave and very serious and we have long faces and very serious sententious words to the chamber about how we must not mislead. Even withdrawing and apologising is not an acceptable remedy to this terribly outrageous misleading, Mr Speaker. We did the right thing by this chamber. We came to the high standards it set and we apologised for what we had to say. What has been said here is grossly and utterly misleading. It was cited in a way which had the effect of grossly misleading. I find it hard to imagine that a man as intelligent as Mr Corbell would have failed to notice what was in that third column when he made his statements to the Assembly yesterday.

Mr Speaker, it was a misleading of the Assembly. Mr Corbell should rise, correct the record, and apologise for what he said.

Mr Moore: And we would back off.

MR HUMPHRIES: If he did so, Mr Speaker, we would withdraw this motion that instant. Mr Speaker, I think it is incumbent on members of this place to enforce the standard which they have applied already very rigorously against the Government. I want to address quickly the suggestion that there is a different test between the Government and the Opposition, or the Government and other members of this place.

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .