Kay Hull (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today I rise in the House to correct something that was said by the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry in this House that was completely untrue. He made a sensationalist claim in this House that had been determined to be untrue. He read conveniently from one part of a newspaper and accused Warren Truss, as the former minister for agriculture, of not having been to my electorate and not having been to Griffith. I am rising in the House today to clear up the misconception, the untruth, that was presented in here at the dispatch box today.

A government MLC in the New South Wales parliament, Tony Catanzariti, showed his ignorance by enforcing his way with the editor of the Area Newsand the editor of the Area News showed even greater ignorance in printing such rubbish, because his paper had covered the visits of the minister for agriculture at the time, the Hon. Warren Truss. I wrote a letter to the editor of the Area News outlining my concerns and indicating that his article titled ‘Where’s Warren gets farmers a new voice’ on 4 January 2008 was in fact untrue. The editor printed this letter. In it I told him that Warren Truss made regular visits to Griffith in his role as the minister for agriculture from July 1999 to July 2005. Both he and Mark Vaile, the former Minister for Trade, ran the Powerpack program, which concentrated primarily on citrus and other forms of agricultural industries within Griffith. I outlined all of the visits that Minister Warren Truss made to Griffith while he was the minister for agriculture. The minister had in fact been there on a considerable number of occasions. When a person rang the editor of the Area News to complain about this article, the Area News editor indicated that it was the most embarrassing mistake of his journalistic career to have printed and heralded such an article as that titled ‘Where’s Warren gets farmers a new voice’. In my letter to the editor, which he printed in full, I asked for an apology to Warren Truss. Eventually, what the editor did as well was print two articles in the Area News correcting the record about Warren’s attendance. The original article also generated other letters from Griffith residents and Riverina constituents to say that the article simply was not true. I think that it had to be corrected in this House today.

The article did not only go on to say that Minister Warren Truss had been missing in action; it went on to say that there had been no ministerial visits to Griffith under the former coalition government, which was completely untrue again. I outlined this to the editor of the Area News and listed all of the visits that ministers had made, particularly to Griffith—and the list was substantial. No wonder the editor of the Area News was highly embarrassed and felt it was the most embarrassing mistake of his journalistic career. It absolutely was.

It was up to me today to get up and to defend the very good track record of the former minister for agriculture, the Leader of the Nationals, Warren Truss, and the way he presented and represented his duties in rural and regional Australia on behalf of rural and regional Australians. I take exception to what the minister did at the dispatch box today, when he knew full well that what he was saying had been corrected. I take exception to that type of politics. The current minister may have visited my electorate. He obviously did not listen to the people that he spoke with, or he would not be making the decisions that he is now making on wheat, because 98 per cent of the wheat growers in my electorate oppose what this government is currently doing to the wheat legislation. (Time expired)