Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

I seek leave to make a brief personal explanation as I claim to have been misrepresented.

Leave granted.

Yesterday I was the victim of a great calumny perpetrated by two government dissimulators in an attempt to defend the glaring contradiction between the statement of the Prime Minister and that of Senator Pratt. For the record, yesterday I asked a question of the government and I quoted from a speech given by Senator Pratt that contained elements that were in direct contradiction to statements contained in a press release by Ms Gillard. For the record, Senator Pratt stated in her speech on Monday, 4 July:

We know that all revenue from a carbon price will be used to provide households with fair and generous assistance.

I know that Senator Pratt is entirely embarrassed that she contacted her own Prime Minister, but that does not justify the outright deception that was later played out in this chamber by Senator Pratt and her accomplice, Senator Marshall.

Senator Pratt maintained in this chamber that she was misrepresented in the Senate by my quotation of her very own statement. To support her claim she quoted from an entirely different page in the Hansard. Senator Marshall went even further. He claimed that my question was 'totally dishonest' and 'absolutely fabricated'. Again he quoted from Senator Pratt's speech using a different page of the Hansard. Further, he called for me to apologise. Clearly, both Senator Marshall and Senator Pratt have made fools of themselves by uttering such falsehoods.