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Independent Clark MP Kristie Johnston posted a video of the incident on social media<\/p>\nA Tasmanian minister has denied making a vomiting gesture behind an MP\u2019s back during a parliamentary debate about integrity, saying he was removing a \u2018Listerine strip\u2019 stuck to the roof of his mouth.<\/p>\n
Independent Clark MP Kristie Johnston was speaking during a censure motion against Premier Jeremy Rockliff when Minister Gavin Pearce, visible behind her on the livestream, put his fingers in his mouth.<\/p>\n
Johnston was speaking about every MP\u2019s duty to uphold high standards when the incident happened.<\/p>\n
In a statement, Johnston called the behaviour \u201cdisrespectful and unparliamentary\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cMinister Pearce must apologise to me, to the house and most importantly to the Tasmanian people for his offensive and inappropriate behaviour,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Independent Clark MP Kristie Johnston posted a video of the incident on social media<\/p>\n
\u201cI call on Minister Pearce and the premier to demonstrate how they intend to make amends.\u201d<\/p>\n
When parliament resumed after lunch at 2.30pm, Labor MP Ella Haddad raised the incident.<\/p>\n
Haddad said the footage appeared to suggest \u201cthat maybe integrity or the concept of integrity or ministerial accountability literally makes him sick\u201d.<\/p>\n
Pearce then rose to deny the claim.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was not the case\u2026 and I mean this most sincerely,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
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Johnston was speaking about every MP\u2019s duty to uphold high standards<\/p>\n
Pearce said he had a throat infection and had been using Listerine strips.<\/p>\n
\u201cI put a couple on my tongue and [had to] move them because they stuck to the roof of my mouth,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was no preemptive gesture. I wasn\u2019t looking at anybody. I simply moved it.\u201d<\/p>\n
He apologised for any misunderstanding.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf that has caused offence or been misconstrued in any way then I apologise,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Tasmanian minister has denied making a vomiting gesture behind an MP\u2019s back during a parliamentary debate about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":742915,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-742914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=742914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742914\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/742915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=742914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=742914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=742914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}