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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 05 Hansard (Thursday, 13 May 2004) . . Page.. 1770 ..

We now know that this is a completely manufactured story, told repeatedly over more than a year. Throughout the two sitting weeks in March this year, the opposition probed these issues and the Chief Minister stuck repeatedly to his false history. In doing so, he repeatedly misled this Assembly. Through the sitting weeks of March, the opposition repeatedly invited him to confirm whether his remarks were accurate and to consider correcting the record.

Mr Speaker, if you had not recalled before then, surely you would have gone and checked. In the course of that year when you had been asked so often to confirm or to check what was going on, you might have gone and checked. But abruptly on 4 May the Chief Minister came into this place and attempted to avail himself of the leniency that the Assembly traditionally extends to those who have misled, who have discovered a genuinely inadvertent error.

Mr Speaker, I have been in that position. At one time when I was a minister I got the time of a meeting wrong during debate. It was information supplied to me and I got it wrong. It was challenged in that debate. The debate finished, but I had the courage to immediately ring, in that case, the union official who had given a conflicting story and ask him whether I was right or he was right. The official checked his diary and, I have to say, was pretty pleased to tell me that I was in the wrong, but he also recognised that I had had the guts to ask him. I came back into this Assembly straight after lunch, at the very first available time, and made amends.

But that is not what Jon Stanhope did last week. Not only had he waited a year; he acted only because others were on his trail. Even the press release he issued about his apology contained two misleading statements. The first is that he told a press conference that he had come back in at the earliest time. That is not true. The earliest time would have been at 10.30 that morning. The Chief Minister’s statement says, “I was told the night before by my staff.” The next available time for the Chief Minister to correct the record was exactly 10.31 am, after you had finished, Mr Speaker. He chose to wait until 2.30 pm to avoid scrutiny.

He went on to say, “The fact is that had I not made the statement upon discovering my error, it is absolutely certain it would never have been revealed.” He made that statement in a press release this morning or late last night. That is simply not true. It was about to be revealed. Mr Stanhope jumped before he was pushed by the coronial inquiry into telling the truth. Indeed, the paper of Wednesday of last week said:

Mr Stanhope’s office was told on Monday night the coronial inquiry had the phone records of ESB executive director Mike Castle and they revealed a call to Mr Stanhope at 7.14 pm on January 17.

That is what prompted him to come back, not the assertion that he had suddenly found out. It was not some accident. He was risking being caught or he had to get into this place first. Mr Speaker, I had been in that position once. Somebody had corrected me and I had the courage to go and check. I came back as soon as I could. Jon Stanhope did not.

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