Page 1801 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 8 June 2022

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In response to Mr Gentleman, if this place were a circus and these guys over here were doing the trapeze acts, when they are redoing the infrastructure between acts, they roll out Mr Gentleman to entertain the crowd. And entertain us he does. I cannot believe that Mr Gentleman has gone through the notice paper, pulled out a list of things that we are discussing today and somehow suggested that this means that the Liberals do not support these things. That is just ludicrous.

Ultimately, when we move no confidence in a minister in this place, there are 25-members who, in theory, listen to the debate and vote on whether we have confidence in the minister or not. That is ultimately what is going on here. In reality, in just about all cases, these votes are cast on party lines. To quote Ms Lee, in a parliament such as ours, with a faux crossbench, those in the government simply run a protection racket. That is what is going on here. When we do no-confidence motions in here, the Labor members are in the wagon and the Greens are riding shotgun. And that is how it works.

In a perfect world, members in this place would genuinely assess the information presented to them in regard to the allegations against that minister; they would listen to the various speeches and make a determination as to whether they can support the minister in the firing line. In a perfect world, members would approach these debates with a genuinely open mind and, after debate, would sway one way or another as to whether they have confidence in the minister continuing.

Madam Speaker, I would say that, ultimately, their assessment of these matters should be seen through the prism of their constituents—the constituents who voted for them. At the end of the day, this should not be about whether you personally have, or whether your party has, confidence in the minister but about whether, based on the information before us, the majority of the people who voted for you would have confidence in this minister. I would ask you: how could they?

Let us be honest about it. If we walked out into the street and presented members of the public with this story, if we walked them through the $8 million worth of contracts, and through the fact that the minister was aware of this matter well over a year ago, would most of them be supporting the no-confidence motion? This is about how public funds are spent; and how could any clear-thinking member of the public possibly believe that this money has been spent well?

You can add to the amount of money that we are discussing the fact that a number of these procurements were considered by the ACT government framework and that the minister signalled in his correspondence to CIT 14 months ago that he was very clearly aware that things were not quite right, or at least needed to be looked into. Mr Rattenbury clearly stated in his speech that what has been laid on the table in regard to these procurements of public money through CIT does not pass the pub test. They are his words. He said it this morning: “Does not pass the pub test.”

Most of the staff at CIT do not think this is overreach. The majority of Canberrans do not think this is overreach. The only people who think this is overreach are the people who are trying to save their jobs. To quote from the consultant in question, I would suggest that this Labor-Greens government has perhaps “not developed the necessary


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