Page 1142 - Week 03 - Thursday, 26 February 2009
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Clearly, what Mr Coe said was a legitimate criticism. Mrs Dunne brought a motion, which was successful, to the Assembly. That was a great victory. It was wonderful that everyone in the Assembly thought it was good enough to support it, but Mrs Dunne initiated the motion and it is our belief that she should receive some credit for that. Ms Porter seeking to seek the credit for Mrs Dunne’s motion is dishonest. There is no doubt about it—
Mr Corbell: On a point of order: that is disorderly and he should withdraw it—suggesting that what Ms Porter did was dishonest. He should withdraw.
MADAM ASSISTANT SPEAKER: The point of order is upheld.
MR SESELJA: It is plainly—
MADAM ASSISTANT SPEAKER: I ask you to withdraw it.
MR SESELJA: I will withdraw. It clearly misleads the community. That is what that press release did and that is what those statements to 2CC did. For Mr Coe to raise that is quite legitimate. I do not quite get the concern of Ms Hunter about Mr Coe raising that legitimate criticism.
In relation to the criticism of Mrs Dunne that she has put out a press release which highlights the fact that her legislative work is seeing fruit—I think that Mrs Dunne does an outstanding job in bringing legislation to this place. She did an outstanding job in presenting legislation to this place in the last Assembly, but of course at that time we had a government that was not prepared to look at anything that did not originate with them so she was not successful.
We are seeing now, early, Mrs Dunne’s excellent legislative work being rewarded. That is worth highlighting to the community. After all, that is an important part of what we are paid to do. We are paid to represent the needs of our constituents and we are legislators. Mrs Dunne is taking to that role with great gusto and I believe that she is doing a fantastic job.
For Ms Hunter to criticise Mrs Dunne for saying “Look, this is what I have done” is quite unreasonable. Mrs Dunne should rightly be proud of the legislative changes. I am sure that Mrs Dunne and others in the opposition—and no doubt on the crossbench at some stage—will be bringing forward pieces of legislation which are worthy of support, many of which, hopefully, will pass into law in this place.
We hear a lot from the Greens about how they achieved this and that through the Greens-Labor agreement. We know that many of those things could be agreed by any two parties in the Assembly at any time—many of the changes to standing orders, many of the ways about how things operate in this place. It is a little bit rich for Ms Hunter to be criticising Mrs Dunne in that way when we are constantly hearing, “This is the result of the Greens-Labor agreement.” Let us face it: the Liberal Party would support the vast majority of reasonable accountability measures, and we have said that we would. In fact, we would often go further than what the Greens and Labor
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