Coalition MP Angus Taylor says sorry over wrong figures in letter to Sydney Lord Mayor

Under fire Coalition minister Angus Taylor has made a belated apology to Sydney’s Lord Mayor over a botched attempt to embarrass her.

Energy Minister Angus Taylor’s belated apology for the botched attempt to embarrass Sydney’s Lord Mayor has not put off his Labor pursuers.

The letter of apology from Mr Taylor was “too little too late”, according to Labor’s energy spokesman Mark Butler and shadow attorney-general Mark Dreyfus

“The more Angus Taylor tries to cover up the abuse of his office the more weight he adds to Labor’s request for an investigation into his involvement in the peddling of these fabricated figures,” they said today in a joint statement.

Mr Taylor has accepted he drastically exaggerated Sydney City Council travel expenses in a bid to score political points against Lord Mayor Clover Moore who had written to him seeking support for the council’s declaration of a “climate emergency”.

The aim of his letter was to infer the council was hypocritical in its climate change alarm because plane travel added to harmful emissions.

However, the $15 million he said in a letter — and then published by the Daily Telegraph — had been claimed in travel expenses was more than $14 million more than actually claimed.

Mr Taylor has denied in Parliament and in a statement last Friday that he or his staff deliberately altered the figures.

But he has not successfully explained the error.

“Angus Taylor’s apology to Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore a week after the false documents scandal was first reported shows the only thing this hapless minister is sorry about is that he was caught,” the Labor front benchers said in a statement.

“This apology is too little too late.

“If Angus Taylor was truly sorry he would be doing everything he could to find the person responsible for the false documents.”

Labor has referred the matter to NSW Police for investigation but there have been no indications the inquiry will proceed.

In his apology to Ms Moore sent on Thursday, Mr Taylor again acknowledged the figures he had used were wrong.

“It is now clear to me that the correspondence I sent you on 29 September 2019 included numbers that were not correct,” he said.

“Given this, I regret not clarifying those figures with you before writing, and relying on those figures in media commentary. I apologise unreservedly.”

Labor is calling on him to “provide the documents, and the evidence, to support his discredited claim the fake budget figures were obtained from the Sydney City Council website”

“The more Angus Taylor tries to cover up the abuse of his office the more weight he adds to Labor’s request for an investigation into his involvement in the peddling of these fabricated figures,” said the front benchers.

Originally published as Coalition MP Angus Taylor says sorry over wrong figures in letter to Sydney Lord Mayor