Kristy McBain lied about Angus Taylor and rural firefighters

Angus Taylor says Labor lied to the country in Question Time this week, and the record backs him up. Emergency Management Minister Kristy McBain stood in the House and accused the Opposition Leader of blaming rural firefighters for the devastating 2003 Snowy Mountains bushfires. Taylor's own words, from the Hansard transcript to the rally where he first raised the issue, say something else entirely. Firefighters and the public deserve to know which version is true, because it decides whether a Labor minister can smear an opponent in parliament and get away with it.

Kristy McBain accuses Angus Taylor of blaming firefighters

McBain used a Dorothy Dixer on disaster policy to launch into Angus Taylor, telling the House the Leader of the Opposition "stood at a precipice in front of people and pointed the finger at rural firefighters, saying that they let the 2003 Snowy Mountains bushfires run." She called it "absolutely shameful," said she was "disgusted," and claimed first responders had come into her office to complain about Taylor's comments. She did not withdraw the claim when challenged.

Taylor calls it "an egregious lie" and tables the proof

Taylor rejected the claim outright, both in the House and in a video posted to his own Facebook page after Question Time.

"I can't believe that the Labor member for Eden-Monaro accused me of blaming rural firefighters. It was an egregious lie, so I called her out," he said.

He then repeated exactly what he told the crowd at a rally in Kiandra, in the heart of the Snowy Mountains, protesting Labor's aerial brumby cull:

"Year by year, the National Parks decided they didn't want people here. They thought the only knowledge or experience that mattered was in an office or a bureaucracy. In January of 2003, the dry storms rolled through, and fire started, and the National Parks said, 'We're not gonna put them out.' So I did not blame the firefighters. I blamed the mismanagement of the National Parks bureaucracy."

In Parliament, Taylor rose on a point of personal explanation and put it on the record formally:

"During question time, the member for Eden-Monaro said that I impugned RFS firefighters. I did no such thing and never would. I was referring to the failures of national park management in the lead-up to the devastating 2003 fires."

He tabled the Commonwealth's 2003 inquiry report A Nation Charred, which found the National Parks's mismanagement had caused "excessive fuel load, inadequate hazard reduction, poor fire-trail access and a lack of management planning." He called it, in his own words, "a dirty, rotten socialist Labor government" that "arms itself with lies," adding: "We arm ourselves with truth, and we will prevail."

Garth Hamilton suspended after "f...king bullshit" outburst

McBain's line landed hard enough that Queensland Liberal MP Garth Hamilton thumped his desk, shouted "f...king bullshit" and stormed out of the chamber mid-answer. Speaker Milton Dick later named him in his absence, calling the outburst "a new low" and a "severe disrespect" to parliament. The House voted 102 to 33 to suspend Hamilton for 24 hours, with Dick demanding he apologise on his return. Independent MP Zali Steggall was first on her feet demanding Hamilton be named, the same Steggall who was reprimanded by Dick two years ago for calling Peter Dutton a racist.

The words don't lie, even if Labor does

Every version of what Taylor actually said, from the Kiandra rally to Hansard to his own Facebook video, blames the National Parks bureaucracy for the 2003 fires, never the firefighters who fought them. McBain took that criticism of a government agency and repackaged it in the nation's parliament as an attack on the men and women who put their lives on the line. Taylor called it an egregious lie. On the record, that is exactly what it was.