Just two weeks after being sacked from the Home Office following a series of scandals and blunders in the ministry, Clare O’Neil has been caught out once again.
This time, the new housing minister has apparently misled parliament, fabricating statements by experts on Monday, and was caught out on Tuesday, after being forced to apologise for inventing economic models she attributed to the Treasury just days ago.
O’Neil has already had a terrible run in her new role and has only been in it for a fortnight; one Labor MP sarcastically asked the Daily Mail Australia “is it too soon for another reshuffle?” in response to the minister’s botched performance on Question Time today.
The Housing Minister even managed to unite the Coalition and the Greens behind her sorry performance, as they worked together to point out the growing list of gaffes and falsehoods coming from O’Neil’s lips.
The Greens were the first to question O’Neil about her apology for inventing a Treasury model which she claimed supported Labour’s policy of building 160,000 new homes.
It turns out that no such model exists, as the Treasury had already confirmed before O’Neil’s comments.
The Minister then attempted to claim that she had simply confused the Property Council’s model with the Treasury’s model, only for the Property Council to confirm that she could not have been quoting its data either, because it revealed there would be no net increase in homes built under the policy.
Just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse for the new minister, halfway through Question Time, O’Neil was hit with another devastating question from the coalition’s housing spokesman, Michael Sukkar.
I wanted to know which experts you were referring to yesterday when you said that “there are experts in the industry who say that (the CFMEU scandals) have no impact on residential construction.”
The fact that no names have been revealed raises the possibility that Parliament may have been misled.
Just two weeks after being sacked from the Home Office following a series of scandals and gaffes, Clare O’Neil has been caught out once again.
Shadow housing minister Michael Sukkar (pictured) appeared to catch new housing minister Clare O’Neil making up experts to support her arguments on Tuesday.
O’Neil’s attempts at evasion ended with the revelation that he was in fact unable to name a single expert to back up his claims on the House floor yesterday. What a farce!
At first, O’Neil resorted to word salad rather than admit another mistake and accused the opposition and the Greens of playing politics.
The expression of dismay could be seen on the faces of his colleagues.
Sukkar then toughened up his question for a second time, seeking to force the minister to respond in accordance with parliamentary rules.
The Labour chairman then insisted that O’Neil answer in a way that was relevant to the question, cornering her.
Mr Albanese (pictured left) must be wondering when his new Housing Minister Clare O’Neil (pictured right) will finally stop making mistakes.
Clare O’Neil (pictured), who has been sacked from the Home Office, is not finding life any easier at the Department of Housing, where she has already been caught making things up several times.
Yet O’Neil continued to evade, rather than admit, another mistake so soon into his new role, which could have made his ministerial position even less tenable than it has already become.
In the end, the President made the Minister sit down so that she would stop feeling ashamed.
O’Neil is expected to be phoning through the night in a desperate attempt to find someone, anyone, after the fact, who she can refer to as an expert to support her claims, rather than being forced to admit another embarrassing gaffe tomorrow when Parliament resumes sitting.
(tags to translate)dailymail