Gary Humphries (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I seek leave to make a personal explanation under standing order 190.

Leave granted.

Yesterday, Senator Polley, in the debate on the Appropriation (Nation Building and Jobs) Bill (No. 1) 2008-2009 and cognate bills said:

I will quote from the Canberra Times of Monday, 9 February—which was a unique day for this country. ACT Senator Gary Humphries, when explaining his stance on ABC local radio, said, ‘We’—meaning the opposition—‘would never support in opposition anything we have not proposed in government.’

The quote Senator Polley was referring to was in fact not a quote from a report in the Canberra Times but a letter to the editor of the Canberra Times and the quote purporting to be from me in that letter was a fabrication or, at the very best, a very mangled paraphrase. What I actually said is available on the public record and it was to this effect:

This is a package we would never have touched in government and we felt it was just not right to support something in opposition we would never have proposed in government.

I believe honourable senators can see there is a very significant difference between those two quotes.