Page 497 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 10 February 2009
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relating to the division of powers and the administration of justice. Consistent with comments in public, that point needs to be made clearly by the Assembly.
We do think there is a significant concern raised by these comments as much as we need to clearly define where the Assembly views the line is. We do feel that the comments have the potential to impact upon the judicial process which is, in itself, inappropriate and should be avoided in the future.
MR HARGREAVES (Brindabella—Minister for Disability and Housing, Minister for Ageing, Minister for Multicultural Affairs, Minister for Industrial Relations and Minister for Corrections) (3.35): I will not take very long. I just find this exercise absolutely astounding. In the last Assembly and the one before that, I found myself having gun battles with Mrs Burke, the former shadow spokesperson on housing and on child protection, for going public, quite often naming people and saying about these people that they have had a particular piece of behaviour, some of it illegal. She, in fact, approached me and said, “These are facts.” When those facts were investigated, Mr Speaker, they were found to be unfounded. She allowed stories to get into the media; in fact, she stoked them and put them in the media. I could not get her to stop doing it. That behaviour was from the very same party room from which this motion comes; the very same party room that encouraged her for well over a term to do this sort of thing. We see, Mr Speaker, the beginnings of it happening again. I warn Mr Coe now, through you, Mr Speaker, for doing the same thing.
Mrs Dunne: On a point of order, Mr Speaker, this is a serious matter about the performance of the Attorney-General. It seems highly irrelevant for the minister to talk about the behaviour of a person who is no longer a member of this place and who cannot defend herself in this place and to make assertions about what another member of this Assembly may do some time in the future. We have a substantive matter here. The minister is entitled to support his colleague, but I do not think he is entitled to launch into the sorts of attacks he has.
MR HARGREAVES: Mr Speaker, on the point of order, the picture I am trying to draw is that this particular motion had its genesis in the biggest bucket of hypocrisy that this Assembly has seen thus far. I do not need to —
MR SPEAKER: Order, minister!
MR HARGREAVES: Mr Speaker, I do not need to respond—
MR SPEAKER: Order, Mr Hargreaves! There is no point of order, Mrs Dunne, but I invite the minister to return to drawing out the relevant points.
MR HARGREAVES: I will, thank you very much Mr Speaker. I accept your invitation, and could I also ask that perhaps later you quietly remind Mrs Dunne that I am responsible to you as Speaker for my points of order, or lack of them, in this house and not to Mrs Dunne. I will not respond to Mrs Dunne; I will respond to you, Mr Speaker.
This particular motion should have been put forward some other time in a different way. I do not believe it really warrants the seriousness that Mrs Dunne is attaching to
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