Page 3573 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 25 August 2009

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I gave those opposite as much information as I had about my person in the same way as I gave it to every member of the Greens and all the members of my own party. I shared everything I had. Did I hold it back? No.

Mr Seselja: You haven’t been holding anything back lately about your own party.

MR HARGREAVES: My leadership is not in question; yours is.

MR SPEAKER: Mrs Dunne, a supplementary question?

MRS DUNNE: Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Members interjecting—

MR SPEAKER: Order, members! Mrs Dunne has the call.

Mr Hanson: You are the one man that doesn’t come up to leadership, John.

MRS DUNNE: There is no show that Mr Hargreaves’s leadership is ever in question. Minister, in what way and to what extent did this survey material inform your decision to ban consumer fireworks?

MR HARGREAVES: Each and every piece of information that I received and gleaned from the surveys—

Mr Seselja: It wasn’t a personal obsession?

MR HARGREAVES: In fact, even the Canberra Times survey was valid—2,400 people; 2,400 people is a statistically valid—

Mrs Dunne: Oh, a phone-in survey.

MR HARGREAVES: What? I took into account, funnily enough, the findings of the Standing Committee on Justice and Community Safety’s investigation into fireworks. I took all of that into account. What a cacophony of crackers in this lot.

Mr Hanson: Why don’t we take a survey of the Labor caucus? That would be an interesting poll. How about a poll of the ministry—and the backbench; let’s include them in your poll?

MR HARGREAVES: The only thing about the polls that is of interest to me is the polls that have got us over on this side of the fence.

Mr Hanson: We know the stats.

MR HARGREAVES: Mr Speaker, if one of their number wishes to ask a question and the rest of them bray like donkeys in the dark, how can I possibly respond?

Mr Smyth: See, John knows the plural of animals.


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