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Labor to turn up heat on Angus Taylor over his Clover Moore attack

Labor will use the final two weeks of parliament to heap pressure on Energy Minister Angus Taylor.

Angus Taylor will again face the heat from Labor over his attack on Clover Moore when Parliament resumes.
Angus Taylor will again face the heat from Labor over his attack on Clover Moore when Parliament resumes.

Labor will use the final two weeks of parliament to heap pressure on Energy Minister Angus Taylor over his explanation for how his office came to use inaccurate figures to attack Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore over travel expenses and carbon emissions.

Opposition frontbencher Tony Burke accused Mr Taylor this morning of misleading the parliament by saying that all the evidence contradicted his version of events. He demanded that Mr Taylor apologise to the parliament.    

“One of the only rules left, is that you can’t mislead the parliament,” Mr Burke told Sky News. “You’re not allowed to directly, you know, effectively lie to the parliament.”

A letter sent from Mr Taylor to Ms Moore critic­ising her for ­hypo­critically ­driving up carbon emissions by spending more than $15m in council money on domestic and inter­national travel contained grossly inflated travel costs. The letter was reported in The Daily Telegraph and said City of Sydney councillors had spent $1.7m on international travel and $14.2m on domestic travel.

However, the council’s 2017-18 ­annual report, available online, shows Ms Moore’s inter­national out-of-pocket travel costs were only $1727.77 and domestic costs were $4206.32.

The use of the inaccurate figures triggered a political stoush when parliament last sat in October, with Mr Taylor strongly rejecting suggestions that he of any members of his staff altered any documents taken from the City of Sydney website.

Mr Taylor has argued that there were different versions of the same report online and argued that only the City of Sydney could offer an explanation.  

But Mr Burke said it was incumbent on Mr Taylor to produce further evidence to substantiate his version of events.   

“Angus Taylor told the parliament that the document with the fake information had been drawn from the website of the council. The council’s produced some metadata to say that, no, they’ve never changed the document,” he said.  

“The National Library in its Trove website … verifies that this information has never been changed. So all the public evidence says that Angus Taylor has misled the parliament of Australia.

“No, it’s for him to go to the parliament and either explain that he gave information that was wrong and apologise or somehow explain that there’s a piece of evidence here that everybody else has missed.”

“On the face of it, he’s misled the parliament. And you don’t get off the hook for misleading the parliament of Australia.” 

Joe Kelly
Joe KellyNational Affairs editor

Joe Kelly is the National Affairs Editor. He joined The Australian in 2008 and since 2010 has worked in the parliamentary press gallery, most recently as Canberra Bureau chief.

Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/labor-to-turn-up-heat-on-angus-taylor-over-his-clover-moore-attack/news-story/4d21cf62877c2f5df03071e3ee7c1e52