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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 8 Hansard (28 October) . . Page.. 2384 ..

MR BERRY: Okay. I move:

Omit all words after "Assembly", substitute "censures the Government for its repeated attempts to mislead the ACT community with the misuse of figures in respect of businesses that ACTEW has won and lost and in respect of the contestable business ACTEW had and lost.".

(Extension of time granted)

Mr Speaker, now we get to really misleading statements, where things are not quoted in context and apples are compared with pears. That has been the crime, if you like, that the Government has been badly caught out on. I refer to its claim about 175 businesses. Of course, the Chief Minister counted them a number of times. This is the one where a business was supposed to be the caretaker's cottage at the AIS, the signboard at the AIS, and the scoreboard at the AIS. They were among the 175 businesses. That is misleading stuff and that was deliberately designed to mislead. Again, on the contestable electricity business, the Government said that ACTEW had lost 17.3 per cent and picked up only 3 per cent of new business; but you were not comparing like with like, were you? The 3 per cent is a proportion of total energy sold. The comparable figure would have been 7 per cent, not 17.3 per cent. Talk about distortions, Mr Speaker; but the difference here is that that was a deliberate distortion of the figures to mislead the community. You have been caught out badly on it. I note Mr Kaine's comments about creating smoke. That is what this is about.

You have damaged your own case because you say that this Assembly should censure Mr Corbell for comments made during the matter of public importance debate on 27 October, but you carefully and selectively picked out two figures and did not talk about the rest. I do not mind if you talk about all of Mr Corbell's comments in the context of your motion, because, if you do and if you put everything in context, it is very clear that Mr Corbell had not set out to mislead anybody. What he was doing was quoting from a document, and quoting accurately from the document. If you choose to feel peeved because you have had some bad publicity in recent weeks, do not take it out on us. Go inside a dark room somewhere and do a bit of circle dancing and humming and sort it out amongst yourselves, but do not take it out on us. It is not our fault if you have botched it up. The fact of the matter is that Mr Corbell used figures, in good faith, from a document which you now have and which is the property of this Assembly and, when you examine the document, you will know and understand that he was presenting information from that document in good faith. I say again that the confirmation that Mr Corbell was acting in good faith is provided in evidence that you supplied to us - the letter that Mr Corbell sent to the Canberra Times, where he said he was referring to figures in 1995 and 1996. Taken in context with all of the words in his speech, it is very clear that Mr Corbell has been consistent all the way along. Not once has he deviated from his source. You have supplied evidence which damns your own case by quoting a letter that he sent to the Canberra Times which confirms his position.

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