Page 1076 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 6 May 2014
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couple of minutes that Mr Corbell apparently had to read them online, for him to come to this remarkable conclusion. He did not say, “Mr Gentleman said in his speech.” He did not say, “Somebody told me.” He did not say, “Mr Coe said it in his speech.” He said, “I read it online.” He said:
The minutes are online and they are available, Madam Speaker. The government is concerned that members of the opposition are deliberately obstructing the business of this place.
So it is a matter of, “I’m caught; I’ve got to cover up. I’ve got to come up with a quick answer, so I’ll simply mislead. I will be reckless and I will mislead.” Remember, members, that Mr Corbell is the only member of this place to be found guilty—the Assembly sanctioned the Minister for Health and Planning for “persistently and wilfully misleading the Assembly on a number of issues”. That was on 24 June 2004. And it would appear that a decade later the leopard has not changed its spots, the minister has not changed his tactics and the misleading continues.
This is the longest-serving member of the Assembly. He knows what is published and what is not published. Just to be sure, I went and asked the committee secretary and she said, “No, Mr Smyth. The minutes are not published.” I sent an email to the director of the Committee Support Office and the reply was:
Dear Mr Smyth
The answers to your questions are as follows.
The minutes of committee proceedings are confidential—
so nobody should actually know about them—
to a committee and are not published or lodged online.
The reply was that, subject to advice, there is an instance under standing order 212A where perhaps minutes can be produced under the standing order. But standing order 212A was not invoked in this case. Standing order 212A was not used by the minister to ask for the tabling of these minutes. But he has intimate knowledge of what is in the minutes and he uses that knowledge. He did not read them online; we know he did not read them online because they are not there. Sheer fantasy, reckless fantasy, misleading fantasy on behalf of this minister—because he is caught. He came back into this place and said:
I feel it is important, Madam Deputy Speaker, to make clear that I have not viewed, nor have I been provided with a copy of the minutes of the committee proceedings and Mr Coe’s assertions in this regard are false.
How did you have such good knowledge of what went on in the committee if you have not read them? That was your first lie, your first mistake. “Oh, I read them online.” But we know that that is not true. Then he tells us that nobody told him. If nobody told him, how did he know? And that is the problem with this defence. If you take it in light of Mr Corbell being the only minister in this place being found guilty
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