Kim Beazley Brand, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition
3:20 pm
Mr Speaker, I wish to make a personal explanation.
David Hawker Speaker
Does the honourable member claim to have been misrepresented?
Kim Beazley Brand, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition
Yes—serially and grievously.
Kim Beazley Brand, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition
I have been misrepresented by two sets of people about the same issue. Firstly, on the front page of the Australian today, and then by the Prime Minister in his remarks to his opening question today. Both the article and the Prime Minister allege that I am opposed to clean coal technology or that I have diminished its significance. They went on at considerable length. It is an extraordinary statement. I have been defending the importance of clean coal technology as being at the heart of our greenhouse response for a very long time. Yesterday, for example, I said that we have to be a country of clean coal. We also have to be right up there in lights, getting to grips with clean coal, to be a world leader—
David Hawker Speaker
The Leader of the Opposition has shown where he has been misrepresented.
Kim Beazley Brand, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition
That is it, Mr Speaker. It also features in our blueprint, which we released some time ago. I discover that I advocated it in 1994—