Page 624 - Week 03 - Thursday, 15 March 2007
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MR STANHOPE: I think it is important at the outset to deny the slur on Mr Prince that has been perpetrated by the Liberal Party. Mr Prince retired. The suggestion that Mr Prince was sacked—
Mrs Burke: No-one said he was sacked.
MR STANHOPE: I heard Mr Smyth say it this week. In fact, Mr Corbell asked that it be withdrawn and Mr Smyth stood up and withdrew it. In this place this week Mr Smyth said that Mr Prince had been sacked. Today Mr Pratt follows on with a question about the basis on which Mr Prince left the Emergency Services Authority. This is a defamation of Mr Prince.
Mr Pratt: He resigned in disgust.
MR STANHOPE: Oh, he resigned in disgust! You have absolutely no basis on which to defame David Prince in this way.
Mr Smyth: Mr Speaker, I raise a point of order. Standing order 118 (b) says that the minister shall not debate the subject to which the question refers. The word “sacked” was not in the question that Mr Pratt asked. He asked whether or not he would now sack Mr Corbell.
MR SPEAKER: The Chief Minister will come back to the subject matter of the question.
MR STANHOPE: I just wanted to make the point for the record that this willingness to attack the reputation of public servants is really a worrying aspect of this opposition’s behaviour in this place. They will go for the jugular of any public servant at any time without remorse.
Mr Pratt: No, we are going for your jugular.
MR SPEAKER: Order, Mr Pratt!
MR STANHOPE: Mr Pratt, the people that are suing you for putting their lives in danger when you were a spy over there in Serbia are going for your jugular.
MR SPEAKER: Order! Chief Minister, direct your comments to the subject matter of the question.
MR STANHOPE: Having said that, there have been changes in personnel. But to suggest that there will be a wholesale desertion from the Emergency Services Agency as a result of the actions of the minister are simply absurd. People make changes in their career. They make career decisions. They move on. They change regularly and constantly. In fact, a number of officers, including senior officers, have left the Emergency Services Agency, to the great regret of the government. They have expressed their regret and sorrow at the fact that officers are retiring or departing or moving on. These are incidents of life.
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