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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 6 Hansard (13 June) . . Page.. 1568 ..

MR QUINLAN (continuing):

Given the little bit of publicity received this morning, I would like to begin at the end and to address the dissenting report. A few things need to be said in relation to the dissenting report. I point out to the house that the Select Committee on Estimates was made up of six members of this Assembly: two from government; one Independent, Mr Rugendyke; Ms Kerrie Tucker from the Greens; Mr Hargreaves; and me. I do not think Mr Rugendyke would object if I said he was at least even-handed in his approach to the government and to the opposition.

During deliberations on the report that has been presented, the numbers were there on the committee for government participants-I use the word advisedly-to have contributed as much as they wished to the report. They could have vetoed a considerable amount of the report and they could have included qualifications in anything that was said in the report.

I have been down this road before, going back to my first year in this place when I chaired a select committee on superannuation liability. In trying to put together a report, I was getting no cooperation from a government member. At the 11th hour, after the draft report had been circulated, that government member produced a 10-page erudite critique of the report and labelled it a dissenting report. I am assured that that report was written by the government member-

Mr Hird: And his staff.

MR QUINLAN: And his staff, on a Saturday afternoon. I did at the time congratulate Mr Hird-he is the government member I am referring to-on the very rare insights into economic phenomena that were shown in that attachment. They were insights and understandings which were not evident during either the hearings or the deliberations of that committee.

With that experience, and experience since of the occasional dissenting report, behind me, I made quite sure that I advised members of the committee that they should prepare and submit any contribution they wished to make. I have in front of me, Mr Speaker, a hard copy of an email from the secretary of the committee, Ms Maureen Weeks, to Mrs Jacqui Burke, a government member on the committee. This was sent out on my instructions. This was the second email sent out. It reads:

Reply from Mrs Burke:

The dissension says that the chairman openly admitted that the draft document being considered by the committee deliberately reflected his biased view. As well as sending out messages, I said to a meeting of members, "If you want contributions in this report,

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