Page 5426 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 16 November 2011

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to the feed-in tariff that householders will be forced to pay $225 a year for the small-scale feed-in tariff. He has used this figure repeatedly over the last at least six months where he has time and time again suggested that Canberra households will be forced to pay $225 a year for the ACT small-scale feed-in tariff. He has made it quite clear; he has linked it very closely.

That mistake has been pointed out by me, both in this place and in public, and has been pointed out by others. Mr Coe has used the same figure in the same context on ABC radio. Yet none of those members have seen fit to come into this place or to issue a public apology for the figures that they have misused.

It is quite clear that the small-scale feed-in tariff has had a pass-through cost of $27 a year, as determined by the ICRC. This is well documented. It is on the public record. It has been explained. I have said it publicly. I know the minister has been asked questions about this in this chamber. Yet Mr Coe and Mr Seselja have chosen to repeatedly misuse that figure in order to mislead the Canberra community.

Mr Seselja has said before, “It is either negligent, reckless or deliberate.” This is what he suggested Mr Corbell was doing. But I would ask the same question: what is the standard the Canberra Liberals want to apply, and when will they start using the correct figures, given that it has now been pointed out to them that Mr Seselja’s press release and Mr Coe’s public comments patently are not true?

MR SMYTH (Brindabella) (4.22): There seems to be some confusion about the process that is followed when somebody misleads the house and that coming in and correcting the record and apologising—I am going to check exactly what Mr Corbell said, because I am not sure it was a complete apology—somehow exonerates the member. It does not, and it does not deny the house the opportunity to take further action. That is the prerogative of the house, and that is the prerogative that we exercise here today.

Mr Barr: Yes, and I think the house has spoken, has it not?

MR SMYTH: The house might not vote for it, Mr Barr, but that is the choice of the house. To say somehow that an apology is the end of the matter is not always the case. Members should be held to account for what they do. As Mr Hanson made the case so clearly, it is not like Mr Corbell has not been caught out on these issues before. Indeed, Mr Hanson quoted nine instances just recently in the life of this Assembly. I can go back through previous Assemblies all the way back to June in 2004 when the member was censured for persistently and wilfully misleading the house on a number of issues. This is not without precedent from Mr Corbell as minister. As so eloquently put by Mr Hanson and Mr Seselja and Mr Coe, he has form. It is about correcting that behaviour.

Mr Corbell has on three occasions—not once, not twice, but three occasions—since late October asserted that the RSPCA got money that they have not received. On the first day you might say that that was an accident. The second occasion may well just have been careless. But to come back and repeat it in this place on the third occasion yesterday is, in our belief, downright dishonest and misleading the house.


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