Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Minister; I will come back to some of the details that you have just outlined. But I want to just go briefly to your opinion piece in the Herald Sun dated 22 August 2016, where you attempted to inflame distrust and division between the volunteer and career firefighters by claiming that seven paid firefighters—that was union members—had to be present before the CFA personnel are able to be deployed to a fire. Minister, given you had to publicly retract this position, why did you make this statement in the first place?