Page 2291 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 16 August 2006
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the Chief Minister’s Department, about staff losses. This is a bit that Mr Gentleman forgot to put in his dissenting report. Mr Harris said:
It is important to realise though that these two numbers are not comparable. They are not based on equivalent structures.
Well done! That was a good start. Mr Harris went on to state:
Therefore when you make the comparisons the comparison numbers are …
Mr Harris then does some accounting on page 397 of the transcript, which I suggest Mr Gentleman should read. He does a comparison to show what is in and what is out and he concludes:
Those comparable numbers therefore show a decline in staffing levels of 318.
Mr Harris understood. If Mr Gentleman had paid more attention perhaps he would also have understood. Mr Gentleman’s dissenting report then contains a fabulous section about Googong Dam. He said he could not support recommendation 13 of the committee report. Recommendation 13, which is a tough recommendation, states:
The Committee recommends that the Chief Minister update the Legislative Assembly on negotiations concerning the ownership of Googong Dam.
Mr Gentleman fought to stop that but he did not do a very good job. Is it not devastating that the Chief Minister might have to come back and tell us who owns Googong Dam? At the estimates committee hearings he revealed that ownership was not transferred at self-government, which I suspect is what most of us thought, but that it remained with the federal government. So there we go. All we wanted was an update but Mr Gentleman was out there fighting to stop this. My absolute favourite is chapter 8, which deals with planning. In paragraph 8.4 Mr Gentleman goes on to state:
Although Mr Smyth proceeded to continue with this line of questioning, during the construction of the report there was an oversight. There were not 80 people listed on the LDA directory as stated by Mr Smyth.
I went back to my enormous pile of notes—members saw what Mary Porter tabled yesterday—and I found a print-out from the ACT government directory dated 21 June 2006, the day of the inquiry. I tabled a photocopy of that print-out from the ACT government directory. Going through it slowly and inexorably, and counting from one to 80, one finds that 80 staff members are listed. I hope Mr Gentleman has the courage to stand up and withdraw what he wrote in his dissenting report because it simply is not true. He wrote:
There were not 80 people listed on the LDA directory as stated by Mr Smyth.
I seek leave to table a photocopy of the print-out from the LDA directory dated 21 June 2006.
Leave granted.
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