Page 3194 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 24 August 2005
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what the Chief Justice was about and the concern about the control of the court versus the control of the executive over administrative matters. But to draw that in and connect that to the action taken by the government in support of the nine people who had an eminent judicial opinion on the coroner’s inquiry so far is really distorting the picture in the extreme.
To claim that the community has major concern: you do not speak for the whole community. This action was on foot; this matter was a public matter at the last election. Yes, Mr Seselja, the community roundly rejected you and your lot—as I have pointed out before, worse than in Western Australian under Colin Barnett; worse than Denis Burke; the worst performance in Australia by a Liberal Party.
Yes, there are fire victims who are concerned. As I have said in this place in recent days, they are fire victims that you people are exploiting. This, to my mind, is one of the most unworthy processes that we are going through. I can recall, since the fire, talking to the Chief Minister from time to time, asking him about the coroner’s inquiry. His answers were regularly: “I do not know; I’m not following it; I’m staying out of it.”
I have seen him in this place take the hits at question time and not answer questions, when he could have quite clearly defended himself, because he did not want to open the floodgates on having a parallel inquiry in this place and because he did have respect for the separation of powers; he did have respect for the independence of the coroner’s inquiry, which you did not have.
This high-sounding approach that you are taking flies in the face of the grubby politics that you guys have tried to play right from day one—grubby, the grubbiest of politics. This business about people on Red Hill on Friday night! Nonsense! Trying to make some bloody great mystery! “What has he got to hide?” stuff where you had nothing of substance! Totally unworthy!
Community! I do not think so. Maybe some people in the community! Yes, there will be supporters of your party out there who will write to the Canberra Times, as they do regularly, and express concern, but that does not mean an avalanche of opinion. I live in Weston Creek. I know a lot of fire victims. I know there are some that have yet to reach closure on this matter. But most have. Most are moving on with their lives and do not deserve to be misrepresented by you.
Mr Stanhope has pointed to this claim that it is the legal profession. You have got false premises all the way through this, which is the same as or consistent with the falsehoods that you have been peddling in public. It is based on the premise that somehow it implies that the government’s involvement delayed the overall inquest. It did not. You know it; you do not want to recognise it; you would like to mislead people; you would like to put the spin on it that draws people to think, “Yes, the government delayed it.”
You have tried to mislead people in relation to the costs when you have known better. How low can you get! Really, this is pretty damned low. But I have to say that the lowest dimension I find in the actions of those people across this place is the double standard, where there are crocodile tears shed for fire victims when nine people, who are directly involved in this inquiry, whose lives are likely to be far more affected than many of the fire victims, have no rights, according to this lot; their rights before the courts should be
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