"Premier Campbell Newman bought a Jeep.

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"Premier Campbell Newman bought a Jeep.

There was no deep mud on the floor of parliament on Thursday, but the government still had to winch itself to safety when a debate about the buy locally campaign turned into "light hearted banter" over who drove what car.

Opposition MP Jackie Trad asked Mr Newman why the government had subsidised air routes to New South Wales based company REX, over Queensland-based business Sky Trans, while asking Queenslanders to support the buy locally campaign.
Describing it as a "fair and reasonable" question, Mr Newman said it came down to value for money for the taxpayer.

But he then took it a step further after staffers provided examples of Labor "hypocrisy" on the issue, thanks to the publicly available interests register, when answering a second question on asset sales.

"Going back to the theme of a previous question from them, I just thought I would elaborate a bit more on the hypocrisy - I just wanted to remind them of the 1500 t-shirts they bought that were emblazoned proudly with slogans about buying locally that were made overseas," Mr Newman said.

"But I also thought that I would have a look at their car buying habits to see how committed they were to the Australian auto buying industry.

"Let's just have a look - the member for Bundamba [Jo-Ann Miller] has two motor vehicles, I think they are Subaru. Australian cars? No.

"We have the leader of the Opposition [Annastacia Palaszczuk] driving a VW.

"We have the member for Mulgrave [Curtis Pitt] driving a Calais - good on him - but he didn't buy an Aussie ute, he bought a VW ute as I understand it.

"We have the member for South Brisbane [Jackie Trad] driving a Toyota Camry hybrid - of course she is driving a hybrid, it is South Brisbane," he laughed.

"I concede it may have been made in Australia."

Ms Trad tweeted a photo of Mr Newman's own register, which showed he owned a Jeep, an American brand, owned by the Italian multinational Fiat Chrysler Automobiles.

Mr Newman said it was just "light-hearted banter".

"I have an official car which is a Calais and I have a Jeep," he said.

"The point I was making was when we make decisions in this world, we try and get the best value for money and that is right and proper and this government will always make the best decisions in terms of value for money when we are spending tax payer dollars."
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/quee...30-11ect2.html