Page 1690 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 21 August 2007
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part of the process here. It is something that we do not necessarily like but we accept it. But there comes a time when it goes completely over the top. Unfortunately, this was an occasion when that happened. He went on to accuse Mr Pratt of laziness. He said, “He is just a lazy, lazy shadow.” On a number of occasions he called him “pathetic” and “despicable”. He said:
Short person you are. You’re despicable.
There is a litany of examples of Mr Hargreaves’s behaviour over quite a few pages of the transcript. It was most unfortunate behaviour. I would hope that he sincerely regrets it, and I certainly hope that it does not happen again. Quite clearly, having sat there, I noted that the work of the committee was impeded. We felt we were getting nowhere. The behaviour was completely unreasonable and it should be referred to a privileges committee to sort out. What will come out of that? I do not know; it is not for me to say.
Clearly, this matter should be referred to a privileges committee. The government should not use the numbers that it obviously has in this place to abuse due process. It does need to be accountable. We do need to have at least minimum standards here in terms of ministers doing their job and providing answers to properly constituted committees. In this case, it was a most important committee which was scrutinising the government’s budget. I commend the motion to the Assembly.
DR FOSKEY (Molonglo) (11.07): It is often difficult to be a crossbencher in this place as I have to be careful that I do not get caught up in the ploys of the opposition or the government. As I have to vote with either one side or the other, I am open to being called a stooge by the side that I do not support. I have given quite a lot of thought to the matter that Mr Pratt first raised a couple of weeks ago in the Select Committee on Estimates. That committee reflected on some of those issues, wrote back to the Speaker and referred in its report to Mr Hargreaves’s behaviour, which everyone is waiting intently to receive.
A number of members have referred to this issue and I have been the target of Mr Hargreaves’s sense of humour, to use the most benign phrasing. I have asked members of the government, as colleagues of Mr Hargreaves, to speak to him about the way in which he speaks to me. People might have noticed that when Mr Hargreaves is having a go at me I feel it is necessary to leave the room as I do not voluntarily want to put myself in a position where someone is continually verbally abusing me.
I have not taken this matter personally because Mr Hargreaves does not know me very well, but there is a real difference between the way in which Mr Hargreaves speaks to me and the way in which he and Mr Pratt interact. The way in which Mr Pratt and Mr Hargreaves interact across the Assembly floor and sometimes in committee meetings can be compared with the behaviour of children in the schoolyard. People generally tend to say, “That is just the way in which Mr Pratt and Mr Hargreaves talk to one another”, but I constantly have to remind myself that this is not a schoolyard; it is the ACT Assembly.
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