Page 2848 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 5 August 2008
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Mrs Burke: Splitting hairs or what?
Mr Pratt: You certainly led them up the garden path, mate. You led them up the garden path.
MR SPEAKER: I warn you, Mr Pratt.
MR STANHOPE: Which of those words? Which of those words do we identify as “build”? Which of those words do we identify as “fund”? Which of those words do we identify as “construct”?
What we have is the Liberal Party going off on a frolic yesterday without bothering to check their facts. No need to check your facts around here: just actually front up to the media, hope that they will swallow it hook, line and sinker and hope that you will get the negative spin on the basis of a statement that is simply not true, a claim that is false. Just throw it out there. Every now and again you might be caught in a lie but every now and again you might just manage to get a journalist that will swallow it hook, line and sinker and actually run the falsehood. (Time expired.)
MR SPEAKER: A supplementary question, Mr Smyth.
MR SMYTH: Minister, given the vagueness of yesterday’s promise, is this not just another election promise that you have no intention of actually delivering, the same as in 2004?
Opposition members interjecting—
MR SPEAKER: Somebody over there is on a warning.
MR STANHOPE: The truth does not matter. The truth does not matter when you are a member of the Liberal Party. You can stand up yesterday and actually say, all straight-faced, that the Labor Party made a promise that it did not make. You can actually repeat it today. What is this? Is this the notion that if you actually repeat a lie often enough it becomes the truth? This is the new modus operandi: in the face of the facts, in the face of the truth, if you keep repeating a falsehood, perhaps over time you will actually convince a few people that maybe there is a skerrick of truth in it.
Mrs Dunne: Tell us about your policy to build a pool in Gungahlin.
MR SPEAKER: I warn you, Mrs Dunne.
MR STANHOPE: There is no truth in it—absolutely none. There is the platform, as clear as the nose on your face: the Labor Party “will reserve a site for a pool in Gungahlin for development when the population reaches the appropriate size”. We have this litany of lies now being run on the promise that we did make, being structured into a promise that we did not make, to cover up for the fact that the Liberal Party’s one and only believable promise in this campaign is that the Liberal Party, if elected, will not build a pool in Gungahlin.
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