Mr BARRY JONES (3:43 PM) —Mr Speaker, I wish to make a personal explanation.

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

Mr BARRY JONES —I do, Mr Speaker.

Mr SPEAKER —Please proceed.

Mr BARRY JONES —The material from Paul Sheehan's book Among the Barbarians attributed to me, and quoted in question time by the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (Mr Ruddock), is a significant misrepresentation. The author at no time sought to check the accuracy of the words attributed to me and featured last Saturday in the Sydney Morning Herald and in the Financial Review on Monday. I delivered a prepared speech to a largely hostile audience of Australians for Ecologically Sustainable Population in North Sydney on 30 August 1997 and the words referred to were not in that speech—members on the government side who would like copies of the speech are very welcome to have it.

However, later I answered a question in which I attempted to explain the rise of the Hanson phenomenon and the way in which Labor was exposed to unfair attack on immigration issues in the 1996 election. I commented that I thought we had been naive in not anticipating the malign nature of such attacks. The words attributed to me are a very rough paraphrase of what I said. As quoted, they completely misrepresent my position. My views on immigration expressed in the ALP's post-mortem on the 1996 election are well known. I faxed a letter to the Sydney Morning Herald on Monday protesting at their misleading coverage of my remarks, but the letter has not been published.