Page 1262 - Week 05 - Thursday, 31 May 2007
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
MR BARR: You are kidding, Mr Pratt. You are kidding.
MR SPEAKER: Order, Mr Pratt! Cease your interjections.
MR BARR: There has been a stream of correspondence on this issue between my office and Mrs Dunne’s office. We continue to engage—
Mrs Dunne: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The terms of the motion are purposely quite narrow. It censures the minister of education for misleading the Assembly in his answer to a question from the Leader of the Opposition on Wednesday, 30 May. It is not about the incident that occurred at this school. The minister must address the motion, which is about the minister not correcting the record—not about the incident at the school.
MR SPEAKER: There is no point of order, Mrs Dunne. It is a debating point which I am sure you will address when you get your chance to reply.
MR BARR: Thank you, Mr Speaker. In reference to what I said yesterday, I said that there were no instances that had been brought to my attention where there had been a flagrant breach of the protocols. The advice that I have from my department and that I provided—I have written to Mrs Dunne directly in response to her correspondence—indicates that there was not a breach of the protocols. What we have is an allegation from Mrs Dunne, an unproven one, that there has been a breach. I have had the matter investigated by my department and they reported back to me, both in April and again in a further briefing yesterday, that no breach occurred.
I will have a further investigation undertaken and have the department look at this matter again today because I am concerned that this issue does not continue as some sort of festering sore between Mrs Dunne and me. She may seek to use all sorts of little tricky things to suggest that I have misled the Assembly, but according to the advice that I have received consistently throughout this, through April and May, the briefing that I had yesterday and the letter I sent to Mrs Dunne, we can hardly be accused of some sort of cover-up here.
My office has been engaging with her office on this issue for months. It has been seriously investigated by my department, and the advice, if I need to read it again for those opposite who were not listening the first time, is that the department has thoroughly investigated the procedures implemented by the college following the incident and found that appropriate action was taken.
Mr Smyth: That is not the point in question; it is what you told the Assembly yesterday.
MR SPEAKER: Order, Mr Smyth!
MR BARR: Yes, and that is right, and based on that advice I told the Assembly there were no flagrant breaches of the protocols—and there were none, because the advice I had was that no breaches had occurred, and no-one has proven that there was a breach of any protocols. I have had the matter investigated. I advised the Assembly yesterday
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .