Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, there have been some alter­native approaches on display and no, the government will not be following them. One of them has been the approach of the Premier of New South Wales, who claimed that public transport fares in New South Wales could rise by 3.6 per cent. That is what he said. That is what the Premier of New South Wales publicly said. And now we know that modelling provided by the New South Wales Treasury showed that the rises would be likely to be less than half a per cent. The Premier of New South Wales falsely claimed that the cost impact would be seven times higher than that which the New South Wales Treasury actually modelled. It also became clear—and I am not surprised that they are very quiet now on that side—that this intervention in the debate was made following an exchange of emails between the office of Mr Abbott and Mr O'Farrell, from Mr Abbott's policy director, a bit of geeing up of a bit— (Time expired)