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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 01 Hansard (Thursday, 12 February 2004) . . Page.. 282 ..

fully aware of that. I did talk to you, and you do know that. I left a message, in fact, on your answering machine. I have talked to the staff that are in your office. I also talked to you this morning about narrowing perhaps and giving more focus to what we have here.

I understand the workload faced by committees; I understand the work of committees. I also understand that Mr Hargreaves, as the chair of the committee, has discretion to prioritise committee matters. I am not disputing that. I am disappointed that Mr Hargreaves has just turned down, out of hand, such an important matter—a matter that he says is important. It is a matter that is not only costing a huge amount of money but also, as he well knows—and Ms Tucker alluded to this—is costing lives.

If Mr Hargreaves believes that the terms of reference are too wide, why didn’t he come back to me and talk about it in the brief discussions that we have had? He just seems to have turned it down out of hand, and I am sad about that.

Mrs Cross: He didn’t do that Jacqui. He discussed it. He didn’t turn it down out of hand.

MRS BURKE: I will come to you in a moment, Mrs Cross. If Mr Hargreaves believes the terms of reference are too wide then, as I have indicated, I would have welcomed his advice in relation to what could have been reasonably taken on by the committee. But he did not come back to me after the telephone conversation that we had. He had the opportunity in that short time to say to me, “Look we can do that, we can’t do that.”

He told me—and this was great to hear—that some of the stuff that the CSSE committee are doing is being looked into. I applaud that. So, therefore, would that not have cut down some of the things that we have to investigate? You could have said to me, “Mrs Burke, we are looking at this, this and this, and, as you have just said, let’s knock those off. How about that?” I would have been happy to have had your suggestions. When it suits the government and, to a certain extent, the crossbenchers, we seem to be able to rally around and deal with other issues but it seems that this issue is not of such importance. Although you have said that it is important, I think you are giving lip service to the notion of what it is about.

Ms Dundas said the terms of reference were too narrow, and I think other members have addressed that. I understand what Ms Dundas was trying to say but I believe that consideration of these terms of reference would be manageable in the time that is available. We need to focus on this. I think Ms Tucker very eloquently talked about the importance of gender isolated inquiries, and I will refer to this again later.

This inquiry is all about the status of men and their needs at this time. That is exactly what it is. It is about fathers; it is about fathers as human beings. We are not focusing right now on bringing other components to this inquiry. It needs to be a focused inquiry in order to ensure that the whole of the family unit works together. It has been proven that if men get it right as fathers within their family unit, the rest of that unit works well.

Mr Quinlan said that because of the workload of the committee, Mr Hargreaves does not have the capacity to undertake this reference. He used words to the effect that the government does not argue with the idea or sentiment, and I thank him for that. Mr Quinlan, I can assure you that, as I said earlier in my speech, I have been walking the walk and talking the talk. I am very concerned and passionate about men’s health and

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