Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to raise the matter of a number of brochures and films that have been used in my electorate. My electoral opponent has a brochure out. Three ambulance officers appear with him on the front of this brochure to indicate a fresh approach. I know the rules about advertising. I have no objection to my opposition participating in a robust campaign. But what I do object to is that public servants of the Queensland government are allowed to appear in ALP brochures but not in the brochures of candidates of other parties. This has happened not only with public servants but also with employees of state government corporate entities.

The state shadow minister responsible for ambulance matters, Ted Malone, raised this in the Queensland parliament and the Premier expressed his great surprise. Either the Premier was misleading the parliament or he himself was misled by his ministers. He issued an edict that it was not to happen in future with ambulance and police officers et cetera. But in a very revealing letter, dated 3 September, Mr Ron Monaghan, the secretary of the union that represents ambulance officers, wrote:

These officers immediately identified that this contravened the standard operation procedures that state officers must remain apolitical at all times. The officers then sought clarification from senior officers regarding the matter as Mr Parr—

Mr Parr, I might add, is my opponent—

indicated to them that permission had been given by the then Hon. Pat Purcell—

the now sacked minister for emergency services. He went on to say:

What has concerned me is the fact that you have come out and stated that these officers should not have done this when these officers were led to believe that they were given permission to do this.

In other words, while the Premier is in there saying that it should not happen, the then minister had given permission for his ambulance officers to participate in this particular photo.

My opponent ran the line at one stage that he just called on spec because he thought they did such a marvellous job—funny that there were movie cameras and professional photographers with him, but we will give that a miss. In a report in the Bundaberg NewsMail on 23 August, Mr Parr was reported as saying that he thought the picture was arranged by the party office. So he is now implicating the ALP in Queensland in this scenario. I think that they were on their meal break. He said:

They gave their permission to be photographed. I believe the advertisement was approved by the former emergency services minister, Pat Purcell.

So there you have it. This guy implicates himself, he implicates the former minister and he makes a goose out of the Premier.

As I said at the beginning, I have no objection—if this facility were available to candidates of all parties, I would have no worries. It should be available to candidates of all parties or to no-one. If you want to create an impression of ambulance officers—and I have done this with a policing shot—you use an actor. You can use an actor and the back of a police cap and give the impression that you are on a law and order mission. Indeed, I have done that. My opponent could well have done that and not embarrassed these excellent ambulance officers. They do a marvellous job. I have a great respect for ambulance officers and police officers and the work they do. They were made the pawns in this unfortunate episode. I deplore what happened to them and I condemn those who first tried to obfuscate this and then were caught out knowing that it was done from ALP headquarters with the permission—which perhaps should not have been given—of the then emergency services minister, Pat Purcell. Let us clean up the game. (Time expired)