Dennis Jensen (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I wish to make a personal explanation.

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Does the honourable member claim to have been misrepresented?

Dennis Jensen (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Absolutely.

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Please proceed.

Dennis Jensen (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On page 15 of the West Australian today, journalist Andrew Probyn, under the headline ‘Jensen may sit as independent if dumped by Liberals’, reported the following:

Party strategists believe Federal Liberal MP Dennis Jensen is considering quitting the party and sitting on the crossbenches as an independent if he loses endorsement for the blue-ribbon Perth seat of Tangney.

Dr Jensen, the only sitting WA Liberal MP to face a preselection challenge, yesterday refused to comment …

Mr Speaker, this is clearly not the point. In fact, I did make a comment to Probyn, both on the telephone and by email. Last night at 6.04 pm Australian Eastern Standard Time, I sent the following email to Probyn and to his editor, Brett McCarthy:

Andrew,

Further to our phone conversation today, I would like to restate the following. I am proud to be the Liberal member for Tangney. I look forward to contesting the next federal election as the Liberal candidate for Tangney and I look forward to serving another term as the Liberal member for Tangney after winning that election. Under the Liberal Party rules, I am unable to make any further comment on the preselection, as has been explained to you several times, and I will not respond to rumours from anonymous sources who lack the courage to stand by their words. Perhaps they are the same sources cited by your newspaper earlier this year on the preselection issue with information which all turned out to be false. This is not a refusal to comment, as you suggested in your article published in the West last Saturday, and I would strongly dispute any suggestion that I have been in any way evasive on these questions.

Regards,

Dennis Jensen.

If Andrew Probyn wishes to report in future that I have no comment, he will be correct as I have directed my office never to deal with Probyn in future.

Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Energy and Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I wish to make a personal explanation.

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Does the honourable member claim to have been misrepresented?

Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Energy and Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do, on two occasions.

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Please proceed.

Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Energy and Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today the Prime Minister in question time claimed that I do not support education funding for the schools in my electorate of Canning. This is as gross misrepresentation. I support whatever taxpayer funds or funds borrowed on behalf of taxpayers are going into my electorate. What I do not support is the cash splash, and that needs to be differentiated.

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The honourable member will now go to the next matter.

Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Energy and Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On the second matter, in today’s Sydney Morning Herald, in the article ‘Hard hat and head for figures’, Annabel Crabb said:

The Liberal MP Don Randall stole out of the chamber and returned with a bright yellow hard hat, which he wasn’t quite brave enough to put on his head.

Mr Speaker, I did not steal out anywhere. It was the member for La Trobe—this man sitting here. Secondly, no-one in this House would question my courage to do whatever in the chamber, given the fact that I outed the Prime Minister with that cut-out.

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Canning will resume his seat. While I do not adjudicate on personal explanations, I am not sure whether it was the member for Canning or the member for La Trobe who was at greater distress over that article.

Stuart Robert (Fadden, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I wish to make a personal explanation.

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Does the member claimed to have been misrepresented?

Stuart Robert (Fadden, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Most egregiously, Mr Speaker.

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Please proceed.

Stuart Robert (Fadden, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In question time today the Prime Minister had the temerity, the audacity, the blatant effrontery to suggest that I would not welcome any funds spent in the electorate of Fadden. I wish to put the Prime Minister at ease and say that I welcome all federal funds in Fadden; what I do not welcome is the manner in which they are raised and the way in which debt is imposed upon future generations.

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Fadden has explained where he has been misrepresented.