Page 1190 - Week 04 - Thursday, 4 May 2006
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Can you imagine anything more disastrous than that? The first thing he would do would be to bully like blazes all of the committee staff. He reduces them to tears, such that some of them have come to my office in tears asking for my advice, to which I have replied, “I cannot do anything. You will have to go and see the secretariat.” Mr Mulcahy, the round the world traveller, is not fit to be the chair.
Mr Stefaniak: I take a point of order, Mr Speaker. We are not talking about who is going to be on the committee; we are talking about this amendment. Could you please get him to stick to the point?
MR SPEAKER: Order! I think it is appropriate to discuss the membership of a committee, Mr Stefaniak, but I would ask members to cease their interjections so that we can get through this debate.
MR HARGREAVES: Thank you for your help, Mr Speaker. I appreciate it very much.
MR SPEAKER: I would ask you not to have conversations across the floor. Direct your comments through me.
MR HARGREAVES: I promise not to have conversations with those people, otherwise it will look like they have a friend, Mr Speaker. The fact is that we need to make sure that there is balance on that committee because we do not trust them. We do not trust them not to put in the type of person like Mr Mulcahy. He has actually brought the PAC into total disrepute in this town and we cannot allow that to happen with the estimates committee.
It is important that the estimates committee be conducted with propriety and in a way that gives all members an opportunity to do their thing in relation to the committee, whether they be the ministers appearing before it or other members appearing at its meetings. It is not appropriate that the Assembly just hand it to the opposition as a vehicle to flog the government. That is not a parliamentary process, Mr Speaker. That is blatant politicking on their part. This is a parliament. We need to understand that committees of this parliament have primacy over the executive and they must be handled with propriety and contain representation proportional to the representation in this place.
We will not take a leaf out of the John Howard method of dispensing grace and favour to the chairs. We will not steamroll things through. We will not have the type of activity that Gary Nairn had over the bushfires when he blatantly politicised the select committee’s process. That will not happen. It would have been so easy for the Manager of Government Business to put forward a motion which contained a three-two split and use our numbers and the game would have been over, guys, but he did not do that.
I do not know what the people opposite are squealing about. You do not have a majority on the committee and you are never going to have a majority on the committee, but you are not prepared to work with what you have. Let’s see whom you nominate. I have a terrible suspicion that Mrs Dunne will not be on it. Mr Stefaniak will not be on it, because that would give him a leg up in the leadership stakes. Mr Smyth will not be on it because he—
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