Page 3911 - Week 10 - Thursday, 28 August 2008
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MR SESELJA: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Chief Minister, how did you forget something as significant as requiring a utility provider to build a major power station, with 18 smokestacks, right next to residential areas?
MR STANHOPE: I have just explained that in fact the reverse is the case—that the deed of option as finally presented actually removed as a requirement that there be a peaking power station. It required the possibility of a discretion to proceed elsewhere, and that is actually what has happened. What is happening is that the proponents, the company, decided, as we all know, not to proceed on that site but they are proceeding on another site. So with respect to the entire design of the negotiations that are at the heart of the question, the allegations and assertions—the false assertions that are being made by the Leader of the Opposition today—
Mr Smyth: You’ve been caught again.
MR SPEAKER: Order, Mr Smyth!
MR STANHOPE: it is actually a complete reverse and a mirror image of the situation as it prevails today. In relation to that, I refer to a statement received at lunch-time today—and this is an aspect of this continuing attack by the Liberal Party, and most particularly by the Leader of the Opposition, on the veracity and truthfulness of very senior people. We are repeating today a position which Michael Costello has today gone on the record to say is the position that he has maintained consistently over recent months, and he has repeated it today. And still the Leader of the Opposition suggests—hints—that Michael Costello is not telling the truth. He does the same in relation to John Mackay. John Mackay will stand up today, as the Chief Executive Officer of AGL at the time, and say: “That is not the case; those are not the facts. It is simply incorrect to assert that ActewAGL did any of these things.” Mr Seselja is wrong.
Mr Smyth: So why were you going to—
MR SPEAKER: Mr Smyth, you ignore me at your peril. I warn you.
MR STANHOPE: Mr Costello, Mr Mackay and Mr Andrew Cappie-Wood have asserted continually that these claims and aspersions are not correct. The fact that they are repeated, and repeated here again today, essentially challenges the truthfulness of Michael Costello, John Mackay and Andrew Cappie-Wood. I have just referred to a statement from Michael Costello in relation to the Leader of the Opposition’s allegations today, in which he uses the word “incorrect” three times—repeatedly. “This claim by Zed Seselja is incorrect,” “This claim by Zed Seselja is incorrect,” “This claim by Zed Seselja is incorrect.”
In the court of public opinion and impression in relation to these things, who would you believe? Would you believe a desperate, out-of-his-depth leader of an opposition who is in serious strife or would you believe the chief executive officer of the single largest company in the ACT? Who would you believe? Would you believe Michael Costello or would you believe Zed Seselja, the struggling, frantic, frazzled,
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