Page 543 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 19 March 2014
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And what did she say? “Yes.” How do you reconcile that? I struggle with that. One is an unambiguous denial to the party faithful. “Only those nasty Liberals are going to close the walk-in centre at the Canberra Hospital,” but good old Katy will not. No, she will not. “What I will not do if I’m Chief Minister after October 20 is close the nurse-led walk-in centre.” You cannot reconcile them unless you realise that there is something dodgy going on.
Let me tell you what was happening. Basically the Chief Minister, as we saw with her actions in 2004 with school closures and with the sale of Calvary in 2008, decided that she will say what she needs to say in order to help her get elected. At the same time as she was boasting about her integrity, her decency and her honesty in that motion in the Assembly—and I remember it well; there she was: “I’m decent Katy, I’m honest Katy”—she was sitting back, tweeting away and letting the Labor Party machine smear poor old me, I would have to say. But more importantly—and I have broad shoulders; I can get over this sort of stuff—she was misleading the community, lying to the community and smearing the Canberra Liberals.
I have got quite a bit of stuff from the old pokie-funded Labor machine. There is no doubt that the Labor Party, funded by the pokies, can spew out a few pamphlets and can put some good products online. They are masters of it, aren’t they? They have got all the buckets of gold from the pokies. There is the website about the real Seselja Liberals. “The Liberal lies need to stop.” It is that simple. You were not telling a lie about the walk-in centre! “The Liberals oppose nurse-led walk-in centres.” There is all this terrible smear about us and the walk-in centre. Then there is some tweeting. I must say your tweet is better than Joy Burch’s.
Mr Wall: It is a bit cleaner.
MR HANSON: It is a bit a cleaner. It is a little more respectable. It is equally dishonest, I would have to say.
What did you say? There were no surprises on the 100th day countdown. “ACT Labor releases policy and Canberra Liberals threaten to close the free public health service.” “A hundred days to go in the election, and the Canberra Liberals use the occasion to criticise a popular—
Ms Gallagher: It was campaigning.
MR HANSON: Yes, it was campaigning. It was dishonest campaigning. It was dishonest. And that is the point. Whether you were going to close the walk-in centre or not—and clearly you were always going to close it—what we are getting to here, the nub of the issue, is whether you were honest, whether you were acting with integrity and whether you were acting with decency. I do not doubt the fact that it was a politically smart move, and your propensity is to smear and raise a bit of a fear campaign. No-one is questioning that. No-one is arguing that this was not good politics.
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