Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I seek to make three personal explanations.

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

Does the member claim to have been misrepresented on three occasions?

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, Mr Speaker, and all in question time today.

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

Please proceed.

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The first one was when the Prime Minister said that I had described what he called the ‘interbank lending guarantee’ as bad policy. I assume he refers to the wholesale term funding guarantee. That is not correct. As I stated in a personal explanation on 16 June 2009:

… the Guarantee Scheme for Large Deposits and Wholesale Funding Appropriation Bill … was brought into the House on 25 November by the government—

this was 25 November last year—

following a call for it from the opposition on 17 November in which I pledged bipartisan support. It was expressly supported by all the opposition speakers and carried without dissent on 25 November 2008, as noted on page 11,335 of the House of Representatives Hansard.

The Prime Minister has misled the House on that matter, as the Treasurer did back in June.

The second matter relates to a speech I gave at the National Press Club on 6 May. The minister for infrastructure said that in that speech I had claimed that the government’s stimulus program did not deliver one job and gave the example of jobs created in building railways and roads. His statement is not correct. I said in that speech that the $23 billion in cash splashes had not delivered one job and in fact I complained that so much was spent on cash splashes and relatively little on real economic infrastructure such as roads.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Albanese interjecting

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Do you want me to table the speech?

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I’ve got it.

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well you have not read it. The third misrepresentation was by the minister for financial services, who referred to a discussion paper I published in 2005 with Jeromey Temple entitled Taxation reform in Australia: some alternatives and indicative costings. He said that in that paper we proposed 280 different models. That is not correct. What we discussed there was the way in which taxes could be made fairer, lower and simpler. The paper did not propose any particular set of changes but modelled the distributional consequences of a large number of changes to rates and thresholds. Indeed, as I said with Jeromey Temple in the introduction to the paper, this was done because of the importance of tax reform being seen to deliver benefits to a broad range of taxpayers and not simply those on the highest incomes.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Table that. Table your paper.

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

All right, I’ll table it. You can have the speech at the Press Club too.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, you can’t have that.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

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

Order! Leave has been granted for the first document but leave has not been granted for the second document.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) 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?

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do, and through me, it could be argued, every member of the House of Representatives.

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

Please proceed.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Stephen Parry, whom I am told is a senator from Tasmania and the Chief Opposition Whip in the Senate, put out a media release today commenting that lies were told in the House yesterday during the debate which changed standing orders. In his release, the senator indicates that there have been four changes to Senate sitting times and questions my criticism of current practices in the Senate, which have seen 21 packages of bills fail to be debated in the House. For the accuracy of the record and to back up my statement, the House of Representatives up until last Thursday, 13 August, had sat for 383 hours and one minute and the Main Committee for 151 hours and 39 minutes, making a total sitting this year of 534 hours and 40 minutes. The Senate—and the caveat on this is of course that there is time taken up by Senate estimates—has sat for just 236 hours and 26 minutes. I stand by my statements that the House of Representatives has worked in a way which is far more cooperative than the Senate has.