Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Foreign Affairs. Yesterday, the foreign minister refused to accept that the conservative New Zealand internal affairs minister was telling the truth when he said it was media inquiries that prompted New Zealand's response on the Deputy Prime Minister's citizenship. On what basis did the foreign minister call the New Zealand internal affairs minister a liar?

Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My understanding of the time line, as backed up by the foreign minister of New Zealand, is that it was the questions put on notice and raised in the New Zealand Parliament that sparked the New Zealand government to act—because the questions from the Fairfax media in fact do not give rise to an obligation on the part of the New Zealand government to answer. But as Senator Wong well knew, as her chief of staff well knew, it was raising questions in the parliament that put an obligation on the New Zealand government to act, and the New Zealand foreign minister has said that it was the questions on notice, the questions in the parliament, that sparked this incident, not the questions from the Australian media.