Page 148 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 9 December 2008
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committee process; when we should see a situation where these things are scrutinised. We believe in that scrutiny. We believe it should be done and done properly. It has not been done.
We have not even been able to have that debate about why it should or should not be scrutinised, why it is urgent to have a truncated debate when the gag order comes out. The gag order comes out on the first day. It is particularly disappointing for us.
MR SPEAKER: Mr Seselja, I would remind you of standing order 52, reflecting upon votes.
MR SESELJA: I am very well aware of it. Thank you, Mr Speaker. We are disappointed broadly but we certainly hope that in future we will see genuine scrutiny, genuine accountability, rather than just talking about it. There will be plenty of opportunities, I am sure, in the next couple of days to see that and there will be plenty of opportunity over the next few months to exercise that. It is one thing to talk about scrutinising the executive; it is another thing to actually make it happen.
We on this side of the house certainly do not accept everything that we are told by the government, believe it or not. Most things they tell us we look at very sceptically. We look at it very sceptically when they say they want to spend taxpayers’ money on a certain thing. We look at it very sceptically when they talk about urgency and they have not even allocated funds for things that are urgent.
We heard before the election this talk about assisting people in crisis with their loans. Yet I am told, through the briefings, that that is not included in this bill. So it is quite extraordinary to us that some things that are urgent are not part of this, and other things that perhaps are not urgent are part of it.
So we believe that there should be genuine scrutiny. We believe that a significant test of scrutiny of the executive has been failed today and we will continue to push. We will continue to push for the government to be kept accountable at every point. And specifically, we will not accept when the government simply tells us it is so. We believe when they are spending significant amounts of taxpayers’ money they should be held to account; they should be scrutinised; they should be public; there should be a process whereby we can examine those promises, we can examine the veracity of what we are being told. From our past experience, certainly with the previous majority Labor government, we simply do not accept the truth of what they tell us.
That is why we have procedures. Those are procedures that we are going to stick to. Those are procedures we are going to push for. And that will sometimes, I think, mean some uncomfortable moments for the government in particular, but that is the nature of a parliamentary democracy; that is the nature of scrutiny of the executive; and that is a principle that we hold very dear and we will continue to push for throughout the next four years.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
The Assembly adjourned at 7.04 pm.
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