Personal explanation – misrepresented

Mr PITT: Mr Speaker, I wish to make a personal explanation.

The SPEAKER: Do you claim to have been misrepresented?

Mr PITT: Most grievously, Mr Speaker.

The SPEAKER: Please proceed.

Mr PITT: On 19 June, that erstwhile publication, the Brisbane Times, reported a doorstop by the soon-to-be-former Premier of Queensland, Steven Miles. I quote Mr Miles as saying “Keith Pitt … just said on [ABC] Radio National. He said he understands why David Crisafulli has to lie right now to win an election. That’s their words, not mine,” Miles said.

I didn’t say that. In fact, the publication said:

It’s not actually the words of Pitt.

To put it on the record, what I said on the program was this:

Keith Pitt: “The Queensland LNP—their members and at multiple state conferences and state councils—have supported proposals for nuclear-powered electricity generation … Look, I can understand David Crisafulli’s concerns. He is trying to take the LNP into the government for, you know, only the second term in more than 30 years in Queensland. So, he [is a] cat on a hot tin roof, I get all that.”

Host, Patricia Karvelas: “Sorry to interrupt—

That’s not unusual!—

but he’s made the decision that this is not going to fly in Queensland. That’s why he’s opposing it, right?”

KP: “Well, at a federal level, our job is to make decisions in the national interest … but I’m not the leader of the state opposition, those policies are up to David Crisafulli.”

So if Premier Miles wants to make assertions, he’d want to make them on facts, not fiction. You cannot make up your own facts! He should get back to worrying about ambulance ramping, hospitals that can’t provide services and other things that the Queensland people need.