Nationals candidate Kevin Hogan plays fast and loose with the truth

This was the Nationals candidate in the seat of Page, Kevin Hogan on 4 June 2013:

Ms Saffin is spreading baseless fear and misinformation. She says the Coalition has vowed to wind back this legislation. This is nothing more than a bid to deceive people. Not one of our parliamentarians has said anything of the sort, and there are no plans to touch the water trigger…..

This was Coalition Senator Simon Birmingham speaking in the Australian Senate Hansard (14 May 2013) on the subject of the water trigger being added to the C’wealth Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act:

Senator BIRMINGHAM (South Australia) (12:43): I rise to speak on the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment Bill 2013, which the government has just rushed into the Senate chamber….

There are also grave concerns about the fact that this legislation targets specific industries. This is a whole new world of activity for the EPBC Act, which traditionally has said that there are broad matters of national environmental significance that should be considered, regardless of what industry is proposing to undertake a development. If this legislation passes, we are putting in place a new area of assessment, but only as it relates to the coal industry or the coal seam gas industry, only as it relates to those sectors….

We have many concerns about this legislation. As I said, though, we understand the concerns of the community as well. We hear those concerns and we are not, by opposing this legislation, going to allow the government to politicise this issue. We will work to fix these issues should we succeed later this year. We want to work to ensure that we get community confidence for this important industry, because it is an important industry. It is generating billions of export dollars and thousands of new jobs and is very important to the economic wellbeing of all states of Australia—to securing, in particular, our future gas supplies.

Mr. Hogan is getting off to a bad start. The election writs still haven't been issued yet he is rolling out those campaign fibs with the best of them.