Page 2214 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 28 August 2007
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
millions in taxes. Mr Stanhope and the New South Wales government have to take responsibility for the shocking way they have mismanaged the consequences of the 2003 fires which destroyed the firm’s stock-in-trade: trees.
With friends like you, Chief Minister, the workers of the ACT are going to be much worse off—because of your actions on the one hand and your inaction on the other. You could actually make a difference. You are no friend of the workers in practice, and that is where it counts. Mr Speaker, the Chief Minister can posture all he likes: his actions prove that he is no friend of workers; he is more royal than the king.
MR PRATT (Brindabella) (4.32): I get up on this line item to refer to ministerial behaviour in estimates and more broadly in this place and in terms of the interface between ministers and the community. Before I do that, I want to go to page 74 of budget paper 3 and look at the counter-terrorism public information campaign. I wonder what the $75,000 and the $50,000 per year in the outyears is going to get us regarding the initiative to support the distribution of information and just how well that particular program is going. That program has dragged the chain for a number of years now; I hope that this amount of money will at least get things moving along, but I do not have confidence that it will. There are a number of other activities under the Chief Minister’s Department which I would question, but I will address this later in more detail in other portfolios.
I now want to go to the matter of ministerial behaviour. I preface my remarks by mentioning the background of the two benchmarks that we operate by here. When I say “we”, I mean this Assembly. The first is the ministerial code of conduct and the second is the Westminster principles governing open, accountable and transparent government.
In last week’s sitting, we spoke about Mr Hargreaves’s behaviour in this place, and I will refer to that again. I do not need to dwell on it; it has been pounded by a couple of my colleagues here today and we really did address the issue in some detail last week. However, it would be delinquent of me not to raise the matter again in the framework of this debate and remind this place that this is an issue which has quite regrettably obstructed the role of the opposition in this year’s budgetary process.
We have talked ad nauseam about the behaviour, this year and last year, but I would like to remind this place that Mr Hargreaves has directed a lot of poor language in the direction of many others, including Dr Foskey. Dr Foskey asked many valid questions about the fate of the Dickson library, the town centre guideline for libraries and possible threats to libraries that might eventuate, but she copped a hiding as well. We know that Mr Hargreaves completely avoided answering any questions on the subject, even resorting to putting words into Dr Foskey’s mouth saying, “Put out a press release saying the Greens want us to close Dickson library.” In the course of two pages of Hansard transcript of the hearing this year, the minister managed to vaguely answer only one question; the rest was just insults and innuendo. Despite Dr Foskey’s attempts to get some clear answers as to what was happening with the Dickson library, she got a vague response and copped a hiding in the process.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .