Fadden MP Stuart Robert confident voters will back him after he breaks silence over taxpayer-funded trips

STUART Robert says he is confident voters will back him at the polls after he apologised for “an error of judgment” that saw him leave the Turnbull Ministry.

Stuart Ribert

STUART Robert says he is confident voters will back him at the polls after he apologised for “an error of judgment” that saw him leave the Turnbull Ministry.

He told the Gold Coast Bulletin he’d probably made a mistake — but continued to downplay the controversies over his travel to China to support Liberal donor Paul Marks, and to Townsville, where he opened a mine he owned shares in.

MP STUART ROBERT ‘I STUFFED UP’

An investigation into the China visit found he had breached Ministerial Standards, although he “may not have intended to do so”.

“Lots of people have popped in the front door and said very nice things,” Mr Robert said yesterday. “It has all been very supportive and positive.

“Like all things, with elections people judge you on what you’ve delivered.”

He said he had brokered the deal with Deputy Premier Jackie Trad for the second stage of the light rail and had also worked to secure the ­upgrade of Exit 54.

“The value of what I’ve ­actually delivered for the Coast is a fairly good basis (for voting for me),” he said.

Mr Robert retained his seat in 2013 with 53.61 per cent of first preference votes, down from 58.33 per cent in 2010 and up from 48.92 per cent when he first won it in 2007.

The MP also defended his initial acceptance of two ­designer watches worth up to $80,000, gifted to him and his wife Chantelle by a Chinese businessman.

He returned the watches after backbencher and fellow watch recipient Ian MacFarlane had his valued at $40,000.

Mr Robert said he’d thought they were fakes ­because “they all came out of a paper bag”.

“It might not have been (brown), and it might have been material, but it was in a bag — who pulls a watch out of a bag?” he said. “I thought he was just being polite so I didn’t think much of it.”

He said his watch “probably sat in a desk somewhere” while it was in his possession.