Page 184 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 6 March 2007
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which he dwelt very much on this subject, comfortable as Mr Smyth is with the selling of innuendo, of scuttlebutt and of slime.
Mr Stefaniak: Answer the question.
MR STANHOPE: Well, it is not that simple, actually. It is a question in relation to which one really should provide some context around the degree of comfort that Mr Smyth has in getting into the gutter, the slime—Mr Slimeball from Tuggeranong. He loves it down there in the gutter.
MR SPEAKER: Order! Refer to the member by his name, please. Withdraw that and refer to the member by his name.
MR STANHOPE: I refer to Mr Smyth as Mr Smyth and—
Mrs Dunne: Mr Speaker, he still hasn’t withdrawn.
MR SPEAKER: Withdraw it.
MR STANHOPE: I withdraw it; I was withdrawing it. But it of course does not change my opinion of the member at all, and he knows it.
Mrs Dunne: Mr Speaker, this is entirely disorderly. When a member is asked to withdraw, they have to withdraw, and that’s it—simpliciter, without embellishment.
MR SPEAKER: He has withdrawn.
MR STANHOPE: Mr Smyth is comfortable down there in the gutter. He likes it there, down with the cigarette butts and the dog turds and the wasted life. That is where he is comfortable, and of course it is one of the reasons that his colleagues tipped him out a few months ago—because he really does not have the maturity or the standing or the quality that befits a leader.
MR SPEAKER: Come to the subject of the question, Chief Minister.
MR STANHOPE: I spent that evening with my wife, Robyn, in company with two other people, the reputations of whom or the professions of whom some of course might have a particular issue with. I think it was to these particular points that Mr Smyth was going, of course—the quality, the calibre and the nature of the people and who it was that I might have spent that particular evening with. I spent it with my wife and with a magistrate of the ACT Magistrates Court, and his wife, and—forgive me my sins—with a Catholic priest, the parish priest of St Matthew’s, Page.
Mr Smyth, of course, was not looking for an answer that bowled me as actually spending an evening with a magistrate of the Magistrates Court of the ACT or with the parish priest of St Matthew’s, Page. Mr Smyth had other ideas. Mr Smyth has been out there spreading innuendo and slime and slurs and outrageous suggestions—as he did when he put in an FOI request for all of my wife’s travel documents on the one and only occasion when my wife has accompanied me on a spouse-accompanied trip. This is the man who thinks it is appropriate behaviour for a Leader of the
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