Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 12 Hansard (21 November) . . Page.. 3990 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

I did a double check, through the secretary of the committee, to make sure that the pastor was informed, because I understood that Ms Horodny would be informing the residents since she had raised the issue with us again and again. As it turns out, when the committee sought to inform itself, the particular person from the community who had been most vocal on the matter was away, but there were other members of the community present. The bureaucrats briefed us and, as they were briefing us, there were interjections from the floor. I said, as chair of that committee, to the people interjecting, "Because we are trying to inform ourselves, I will let you have a say if there is something that you believe ought to be corrected". We gave the pastor the opportunity to have a say and the people who were there the opportunity to present their point of view.

I do not think we should be so formal in our committees that we do not have the flexibility to be able to handle that sort of situation. This was done to inform the committee as to whether - - -

Ms Horodny: That was the problem.

MR MOORE: No, Ms Horodny; the problem was that you did not get back to the people and tell them that that was what the process was going to be. That is the real problem. The problem was with you; the problem has been with you all the way along. You did not understand what we were going to do. You came back and asked us whether we would do it, and we agreed with you that we would allow you to invite the residents to come and do that.

Ms Horodny: That is not true, Mr Moore.

MR MOORE: So that the record shows it, Ms Horodny has a different memory from the other three of us on this.

Ms Horodny: The appropriate spokesperson told you that he would not be available on that day.

MR SPEAKER: Order! Mr Moore has the floor, Ms Horodny.

MR MOORE: Ms Horodny indicates that the spokesperson for the group had said to me that he personally was not going to be there. Indeed, I was informed on the Thursday afternoon that a particular person was not going to be there. So what? Our briefing was from the planning group of the department as to what was going on. We said that, if some member of the community wanted to enhance our knowledge, we would listen, but I would not listen without also listening to the pastor's view, and he presented his view. That was to inform the committee and, having listened to those people, we then said, "No, we are not going to do an inquiry".

Why did we not do an inquiry? For the same reason that Ms Horodny has objected and written a dissenting report to the report we tabled earlier today: Because we are interested in priorities and outcomes and the amount of work we do, and she does not seem to have any idea of what that is about. We have a certain amount of work to do,

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .