Page 3051 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 17 October 2007
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MR STANHOPE: Mr Speaker, the government will not support a suspension of standing orders to allow Mr Pratt to tell us about an anonymous telephone call he has had.
Mr Stefaniak: It wasn’t anonymous to him, pal.
MR STANHOPE: Actually, an anonymous telephone call from an obvious political enemy of the government. When Mr Pratt has some evidence—
Mr Stefaniak: Some official doing their job and frightened of being sacked if he comes out! There are a lot of people like that.
MR SPEAKER: Order! Mr Stefaniak.
MR STANHOPE: When his anonymous friend has the integrity and the courage to put his name on a piece of paper—
Mr Stefaniak: What are you going to do? So you can sack him?
MR SPEAKER: Order! Mr Stefaniak.
MR STANHOPE: When that happens, of course we will accommodate Mr Pratt.
Mr Pratt: What? So you can bully him?
MR SPEAKER: Order! Mr Pratt.
MR STANHOPE: But we are not going to subvert the processes of this house to allow Mr Pratt to stand up in this place and slag off on the basis of an anonymous, cowardly telephone call from an alleged ACT public servant. This is just Mr Pratt saying, “I have a contact, a public servant, impeccable source, but I am not going to tell you who he is.” Mr Pratt is not going to tell us where he works, what he knows, what sort of credibility he has, whether or not he is a member of the Liberal Party or whether this person actually exists or is just a figment of Mr Pratt’s imagination. We are not going to subvert the business of this Assembly to allow Mr Pratt to go off on some frolic. I must say, it does put in some relief now the nature of the comments in the press releases and the interviews that Mr Pratt has done in the context of this unimpeachable, incontrovertible evidence he has that I was involved in a departmental administrative decision. It is a lie. It is an absolute lie.
MR SPEAKER: Withdraw that.
MR STANHOPE: Mr Pratt’s peddling of this lie has gone far enough, and I am not going to—
MR SPEAKER: Withdraw that.
MR STANHOPE: No, no, I meant that the allegation by the nameless, anonymous person is a lie. I was not suggesting Mr Pratt was lying. I am saying that anybody who
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