Dr THEOPHANOUS(3.10 p.m.) —Mr Speaker, I wish to make a personal explanation.

Mr SPEAKER —Does the honourable member claim to have been misrepresented?

Dr THEOPHANOUS —Yes, I do.

Mr SPEAKER —Please proceed.

Dr THEOPHANOUS —For the second week in a row, the Sunday Age has published false statements about me in an attempt to smear me with respect to the so-called Chinese students issue three years ago. The key contents of the article on page 2 in yesterday's edition are false. The whole article was built around the claim that a statutory declaration issued by a former staff member of mine contained a false statement and that the person had been pressured into making that statement. The key claim in the paper is this:

Dr Theophanous' staffer had signed the declaration stating that she had been in Melbourne when she was in fact in Canberra.

This claim is completely wrong. The statutory declaration was signed on 1 December and has been given to the Federal Police. Nowhere in the declaration does the staff member refer to having been in Melbourne as distinct from Canberra with respect to the events referred to in the declaration. The key claim on which the story is based is therefore totally false.

Furthermore, the circumstances of these erroneous comments are extremely disturbing. A state Liberal MP Mr Bernie Finn was misled into making this and other erroneous statements in the Victorian parliament. I have spoken to that MP. He confirmed that the journalist writing the article, Paul Robinson, provided him with information for his statement. I have also been able to confirm that Mr Robinson was in the gallery of the state legislature late on Friday night to listen to Mr Finn's comments.

What we have here is an attempt by a journalist to mislead a member of parliament into making false allegations. Because these comments are protected by parliamentary privilege, the paper has printed those allegations. All this shows is that Mr Robinson and the Sunday Age have resorted to outrageous tactics in their attempts to maliciously defame me on this issue.

Finally, I now have proof that the first front-page article on 1 December also contained false statements. On the basis of this, I have had no choice but to instruct my lawyers to issue a Supreme Court writ claiming damages for malicious defamation by the Sunday Age.