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Mr PAUL GIBSON (Blacktown) [5.15 p.m.]: I speak about an issue that has caused a great deal of concern in my electorate and in many other electorates. It relates to reports by the Daily Telegraph during and after a recent study tour to South Africa and Russia that was undertaken by members of the Staysafe committee. We returned from the tour last night. The Daily Telegraph could not even get that right—it reported that we returned today. I say from the outset that the reports are the greatest abuse of the written word. The Daily Telegraph has sunk to a new low and I call for the sacking of the three journalists involved: David Fisher, Fiona Hudson and Bruce McDougall. I do so not just because of what was written but the way it was written. The journalists reported straight-out lies to the readers of New South Wales in a sensational manner to try to get at members of Parliament. Their actions should be exposed.
The various headlines read, "Busted in Britain", "Rort back and sides", "Caught on a $55,000 tour" and "MPs on a Russian road to nowhere". Picture this: We walked out of a pub at 8 o'clock at night in London and saw a figure in front of us. She had a beanie pulled down over her head, an overcoat right up to her ears and a scarf wrapped around her head. The only things peeping out were her little eyes. She looked like the proverbial and as soon as we saw her we said, "You're from the Daily Telegraph". Guess what? We were right! She asked us what we were doing. I told her the protocol of the tour and that we report to the Parliament. The Daily Telegraph story was a beat-up. Seven days of our 14-day tour were spent either in an aeroplane or waiting to board one. As to the "rort", from 2½ hours of photographs of the 14-day tour the Daily Telegraph came up with me having a haircut. That day we had been involved in six hours of meetings and discussions at Westminster. The Daily Telegraph reported that I was laughing while I was having my hair cut. Did it expect me to lie on the floor and cry? I walked outside and it again caught me red-handed, 10 minutes from where we were staying.
I had four T-shirts or, as the article stated, four polo shirts. I had put the dirty T-shirts into the laundry to be washed and then had the temerity to pick them up from the laundry! Afterwards the honourable member for Wagga Wagga and I went down to the first hotel we could find to buy dinner. We were there for about an hour and ate sausages and mushy peas. It was reported that we had been to a flashy restaurant when, in fact, we had been to a hotel. That was the whole exposure—picking up my washing and having a haircut, all on a day during which we had six hours of meetings. The Daily Telegraph, that standout newspaper, reported at greater length on Saturday that the members of Parliament were now in St Petersburg on a taxpayer-funded tour. They even got the cartoonist and author Warren Brown involved. The article stated:
ST PETERSBURG: One of the world's most beautiful cities—the splendour of the Hermitage, the canals and the gondolas, reminiscent of Venice …
The article continued:
It is heartening to see Parliamentary Staysafe Committee crusaders, the Member for Blacktown, Paul Gibson, and the Member for Wagga Wagga, Daryl Maguire, lugging their swags business class to St Petersberg …
Well, it was fine to suggest in a two-page article on Saturday and in today's edition of the newspaper that we were swanning about at taxpayers' expense in St Petersburg—except that we did not go to St Petersburg! The Daily Telegraph has stuffed up again, and stuffed up badly. That newspaper also referred to "a spokesperson for FIA". The Director of the FIA Foundation for the Automobile Society has revealed that the person spoken to was a junior telephonist. Once again the Daily Telegraph got it wrong. True journalists would turn over in their graves if they knew what these people were doing. I have taken legal action against the Daily Telegraph and that newspaper will have an opportunity in court to prove the truth of what was contained in the articles it published.