Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

As I said before, there is absolutely nothing out of the ordinary in members of parliament making representations on behalf of constituents to ministers’ offices. There is nothing out of the ordinary in that at all. This occurred quite a bit around the time that many of these car dealerships looked to be in trouble and were not able to secure finance. So certainly there were numerous representations made to my office by members of parliament on behalf of car dealers. There will be members on the other side over there and over there who made those representations. Secondly, there is absolutely nothing unusual for those representations to be then passed on to the department.

I can say I have had no discussions with the Prime Minister about this matter whatsoever—none whatsoever. I am happy to look at what communications have taken place between my office and other offices. I am happy to do that, and I am sure there were a number of communications between my office and many over there and many over there. But, in the case of the Prime Minister and me, there were none.

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