Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, I am delighted to respond to the question. The shadow Treasurer said, ‘Did he find a car dealer.’ I found many car dealers. In fact I released some correspondence overnight that shows that other car dealers were receiving as much, if not more, attention from the Treasury than Mr Grant. There were many car dealers receiving attention from the Treasury. That is the case. Built around this is a farrago of lies from those opposite about how these cases were being handled.

One of the ones that is put around is that Mr Grant had personal updates sent to the Treasurer’s fax. I just want to go through that one again, Mr Speaker, because there were something like 130 emails sent to my office by Mr Grech—130 emails—and almost 30 per cent of those emails from Mr Grech to my office contained documents specifically for my attention. One of those did go to my home fax. Why? Because I happened to be at home. That is a remarkable thing to happen, isn’t it, Mr Speaker? This year the office has sent 209 faxes to my home via email, a total of 1,487 pages, and since I have become Treasurer, 4,638 pages have been sent to my home fax. So let’s just dispense with that.

Of course there is also the notion that there is some conspiracy because some of the emails were copied to the Secretary of the Treasury. Mr Grech sent 131 emails to my office. Dr Henry was copied in to 82 of those emails. The next suggestion that we hear from those opposite is that Mr Grant received personal referrals to finance companies and that somehow he was the only person who received a personal referral to finance companies. I was talking to the MTAA only this morning and they were talking about the fact that many of their members—

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