Page 2380 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 16 June 2009
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some limitation of this. Whilst I think there is politicisation there—clear politicisation—it was not as bad as the Minister for Health and what happened with the Minister for Health and the Department of Health.
We also saw it with Mr Corbell and how he treated the Chief Police Officer. The Chief Police Officer did express surprise that what was a government announcement was turned into a party political announcement. I said at the time, and I maintain, that I do not believe that the Chief Police Officer did anything inappropriate. He advised the committee, I understand, that he did not know that there would be Labor candidates there. He would have been, no doubt, sprung with a photo opportunity. Nonetheless, the minister once again politicised the Chief Police Officer, and that is unfortunate. Our police force serves us with integrity; we have a lot of respect for them and it is unfortunate when we have ministers playing those kind of games.
Those were some of the things that came out. There may well be further action. The Assembly will need to consider this in light of whatever response the government has to some of these.
There is the OwnPlace correction, which has been touched on by Mr Smyth. It was extraordinary that we had to write to these builders and others to correct what the Chief Minister said. It is disappointing when we get such misrepresentation on such a regular basis, it would seem.
We saw statements on land rent that were simply not backed up by the evidence—in fact, were contradicted by the evidence. And what happened when they were caught out on the Genworth issue? I do think the Assembly needs to look at this. When they were caught out not telling the truth, what they said was, “No; actually, when we said it was the global financial crisis, we were right. Genworth were lying.” That is essentially what the Chief Minister’s office has said on this—that when Genworth denied it was as a result of the global financial crisis, they must have not been telling the truth. It is quite outrageous that they would make that assertion that Genworth, who gave extensive reasons, would somehow withhold the truth or lie—with no evidence, of course, to back that up. There is no evidence whatsoever—not a shred of the evidence—to back up that assertion. This is the kind of game playing we see.
Another thing that was interesting—this is not just in the majority report but also in the dissenting report—is that there is no recommendation to pass the budget. There was obviously a lot of concern about the quality of this budget when not even Ms Burch was prepared to recommend in her dissenting comments that the budget be passed. That does raise some serious questions about what all five committee members thought of this budget. There was Ms Burch and the majority report; no-one recommended passing the budget. There were obviously concerns, right down to Ms Burch. All I would say is that Ms Burch has serious concerns. We will consider Ms Burch’s concerns and the committee’s concerns, but it has not been put in there as a recommendation. We have not seen a credible plan here. Indeed—
Mr Stanhope: “Liberals to oppose the budget.” There’s a revelation. Why didn’t you put that in the report?
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