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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 06 Hansard (Thursday, 24 June 2004) . . Page.. 2722 ..

that is an incorrect figure. Will you, at one stage in your life, have the grace that Mr Corbell has shown in this place and stand and say, “That has been a misleading figure”? Would you? Do you have that courage?

Mr Smyth: Is it misleading?

MR QUINLAN: Yes. It occurred in 1995-96—the middle year of the Carnell government. It is not indicative of the bottom line because it is inflated by abnormal items. So it is neither indicative nor attributable to Labor.

Mr Smyth: It was the Auditor-General’s figure.

MR QUINLAN: You have been using it. If you did not know those few details, Mr Smyth, you have been reckless—equally at fault. So I challenge you to show the same moral courage that Mr Corbell has shown today. Stand on your feet and admit that you have misled. You have used that figure in the public forum, so you have misled the public.

I will go to one other very recent example before I move on, and I have considered referring the matter for legal advice. You went on the public record—not in this place but outside, in the public forum where it does more harm—and accused me of illegally interfering in the appointment of the CEO of the Canberra Tourism and Events Corporation. Do you have the courage to stand up and admit you were wrong there? I do not think so. If we are to have a standard, and if you are going to be the champion of a standard, then I think the first thing you need to do is to make the best attempt you can to rise to it.

I will very quickly endorse Mr Corbell’s credentials as a minister. If you can be honest with yourselves for a couple of minutes, imagine that the ACT, with its $2½ billion budget and 16,000 employees, is your enterprise and you have these 17 from which to choose the board of management: consider whether you will include Mr Corbell. I suggest that, if it were in your interests, he would be one of the first chosen. An event like this—no matter how spurious it might be, how it might be reflective of the politics of this place—does do harm; it does cause angst to the person who is accused. I am sure Mr Corbell has not enjoyed this process. I am sure that he has come out, at the other end, a bigger man—not that he is it not a big man now!

Some continued mudslinging does work—I have to give you that. If you sling enough mud, some will stick. But I have to say that, when we go through what is contained in Mr Smyth’s accusation this morning—and we are talking about a lack of confidence over a couple of numbers which are reasonably explained—we should really reflect upon it. As I close, Mr Smyth, I repeat my challenge to you.

MS TUCKER (10.08): There are several points in this no confidence motion which raise serious questions about Mr Corbell. The most fundamental is the question of whether he should lose his ministry because of seriously misleading the Assembly. I say “serious” because I think we have to be careful, in any analysis, to look at the seriousness of it as well as whether there was an intention to mislead. It is not a matter of whether it was a simple misleading or not; it could well be the case, as others have said—Mr Quinlan has certainly made the point very clearly—that all of us have at one

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