Page 1188 - Week 04 - Thursday, 4 May 2006
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
going to be good guys has gone out the window yet again. You will bring this Assembly into disrepute, you will bring the whole committee process into disrepute and you will bring the whole estimates process into disrepute if you go ahead with this foolish amendment.
MR HARGREAVES (Brindabella—Minister for the Territory and Municipal Services, Minister for Housing and Minister for Multicultural Affairs) (11.21): I think we are hearing the bleatings of a stuck pig, Mr Speaker.
Mr Pratt: Gee, that is an intellectual contribution!
Mr Stefaniak: It is original.
MR HARGREAVES: And now we are hearing the grumblings of the erstwhile deputy leader of the Liberal Party, the person who would be king but has not got a hope in Hades.
Mr Pratt: I have just been promoted.
MR HARGREAVES: We are beginning to hear grumblings coming out of Mr Superplotter over there, too. Mr Speaker, we are talking about the constitution of a committee so that it works.
Mrs Dunne: For you.
MR HARGREAVES: Here we go, Mr Speaker; they cannot contain themselves. They need some portaloos over there, I suspect. Mr Speaker, the reason that the government needs to have three people on this committee is exactly the same as the reason that the people of the ACT would like to see that. It is that we cannot trust the Liberal Party. Let us call a spade a spade. We do not trust you. We do not trust you because you would subvert the thing. You would run the whole thing as a piece of political machinery, to your own ends. You have done that since I came into this place in 1998. Some of the stuff that has come out of the Liberal Party in estimates committee reports has been absolute rot and has perverted the whole system.
Dr Foskey ought to give serious consideration to proportionality in relation to the committee system. Mr Smyth says that the proportionality ought to apply to those members available. That has not been the case in this place since the year dot. Any talk about the standing orders and proportionality should relate to the total number of members. There are 17 of us and Dr Foskey is entitled to one-seventeenth. She is lucky to be on a committee at all, because it is a proportional thing. In fact, when it comes to a five-member committee, the proportionality ought to be three government and two opposition members. That is the reality of the day but, because of the inclusive nature of this Assembly, she has come onto the committee.
What are we afraid of? A three-all draw does not give this government a majority, but it does ensure that the absolute fabrication that these characters come up with will be avoided.
Mr Pratt: We stand alone.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .