Page 62 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 28 February 2007
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selective memory versus a coroner who is there to try to get to the bottom of the matter.
We still have not heard what motive Coroner Maria Doogan would have had to play with the facts, to go after people just for the sake of it, to make stuff up, to selectively quote information. There is no motive. What we have had is a cabinet which has an interest—
Mr Stanhope: Have you read the AHA report yet? Is that made up too?
MR SPEAKER: Order!
Mr Mulcahy: Are you getting desperate?
Mr Stanhope: No, I am not. I am waiting for your speech, Mr Mulcahy.
MR SESELJA: —which has a strong interest—
Mr Pratt interjecting—
MR SPEAKER: Order! Resume your seat.
Mr Mulcahy: I’ve been waiting for it.
MR SPEAKER: Resume your seat.
Mr Stanhope: We are waiting for your speech, Mr Mulcahy, with great interest.
MR SPEAKER: Order!
Mr Mulcahy: You will be disappointed.
MR SPEAKER: Order! Mr Seselja has the floor.
MR SESELJA: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Who do we believe? Do we believe the Chief Minister, who has a very direct interest in this and who, through this inquiry, has shown himself to have at best a memory that is unreliable—a memory that is not really reliable—or a coroner who, after an exhaustive investigation, found that he actually was wrong. Who are the people going to believe?
The central part of the government’s argument and defence is that somehow the coroner was biased or was not up to it. Yet we see where the motives are. We have the politician who has everything to lose, with a selective memory, versus a coroner who has never been impugned before, as far as I am aware, who is there as an objective finder of fact and who, through an exhaustive inquiry, has made findings. If you doubt that the coroner is not biased, let me say that they tested it in the courts. They tried to say she was biased. They put it to the Supreme Court that she was biased or that there was an apprehension of bias. The court rejected the idea that there would even be an apprehension of bias, let alone real bias. They rejected it. It was thrown out.
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