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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2013-05-01 Daily Xml
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PARTIYA KARKEREN KURDISTAN

Ms CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (14:55): My question is to the Premier. What information has the Premier now received to accept ASIO's advice that PKK is a terrorist organisation?

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL (Cheltenham—Premier, Treasurer, Minister for State Development, Minister for the Public Sector, Minister for the Arts) (14:55): This is a bit of a tedious line of questioning which emerged from a false report in The Australian some time ago. If you read the media conference, you would have realised it was what one might describe as a bit of tete-a-tete between one of the journalists at The Australian and myself—

The Hon. A. Koutsantonis: Can we guess?

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL: —yes, insert name herein—about this whole question of the Minister for Multicultural Affairs attending a community event, which she had committed to do, to be with a community group which has no allegations made against them. They are just a simple community group in South Australia that wished to have the relevant minister along with them as they were commemorating the deaths of certain people that had occurred in another place. They were mourning their deaths and the minister decided it was appropriate to be with them in that situation.

I was given a line of questioning by the relevant journalist which sought to suggest that I somehow or the minister somehow had endorsed the activities of a terrorist group by simply attending that commemoration. The minister said she didn't, I said we didn't, the government certainly doesn't and never would support the activities of any terrorist group.

Never at any time did I suggest that we disagreed with ASIO's advice that another organisation—not the community group that the minister attended—was a terrorist organisation, yet it was reported in a way that suggested that I had. It's simply a false report that has now been leveraged up with a further false report today. It does no credit to the journalist in question to continue to repeat a false report, and we will be taking the matter further.

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