Steve Hutchins (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I seek leave to make a brief personal statement.

Leave granted.

After question time in the House of Representatives today, Mr Slipper, the member for Fisher, made a statement in relation to an article that appeared in a number of News Ltd publications on Sunday. The article was written by Glenn Milne. In that article, a number of allegations were made about the events that transpired on an ADF program that Mr Slipper and I attended, along with Senator Bushby and Mr Don Randall, the member for Canning.

In the article it was alleged that Mr Slipper had potentially jeopardised the safety and wellbeing of a number of sailors on HMAS Stuart. I just wish to correct the record this evening. I was advised on Friday morning that Mr Milne was writing this article on Mr Slipper. The basis of the article, as I was told, was that Mr Slipper demanded to use the ship’s satellite phone to ring a number of people. Mr Milne tried to ring me on Saturday. Eventually he got hold of me on Saturday afternoon and he asked me for my version of what occurred. What he had been told by Defence sources was my recollection of events as well.

In the week of 14 July this year, the other three colleagues from parliament and I were part of the ADF program that went to the Middle East. In the second week of the program, we were on HMAS Stuart. Mr Slipper has claimed that the article by Mr Milne was full of, to use his term, ‘misrepresentations’. That is not true. I was there, along with my colleagues whom I have already named, and this is what, as I recall, happened.