Page 2465 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 17 June 2009
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MR SESELJA: Well, I will tell you. I have said it, but I will say it again in a moment for Ms Gallagher and I will say it really slowly. There are two issues here. The primary reason why we are moving this censure motion is that this minister showed absolute contempt for the Assembly. It was agreed by the estimates committee that this minister showed his—
Ms Burch: No, it was not. Don’t put me into that.
MR SESELJA: Well, it was agreed. The committee agreed. Ms Burch did not agree with really anything that was potentially against the government. But the committee agreed. The committee agreed that this minister had shown contempt for the Assembly.
If we are going to be able to scrutinise ministers properly, they have to come forward and answer questions. We asked the Minister for Health and the Minister for Planning to come back; only the Minister for Health came back. We have the situation where the Minister for Planning believes that he is above scrutiny and that his conduct is not subject to the scrutiny of the Assembly or the scrutiny of the estimates committee. That is essentially what this minister was saying by refusing our recall.
Mr Stanhope was recalled last year. Mr Stanhope could have taken the same path as Mr Barr, but chose not to—in fact, in a different situation where there was a majority government. We have Minister Barr saying to the Assembly that he believes he does not have to explain himself. He does not have to come back and answer legitimate questions. The reason the committee’s interest was piqued in the first place was the timing. It was clearly timing that was designed—
Ms Gallagher: The conspiracy theorists are alive and well.
MR SESELJA: It is a conspiracy theory. The Minister for Health says it is a conspiracy theory that both the Minister for Health and the Minister for Planning chose to take the relevant actions directly after they had finished appearing before the estimates committee. We had two days of hearings with the Minister for Health and this issue was discussed at length. Only after those hearings were completed did she write to the planning minister asking for him to call it in.
Then the Minister for Planning, only after appearing before the estimates committee as Minister for Planning, put out a press release saying that he would be calling in this car park. It was deliberately designed to avoid scrutiny and the committee had serious concerns about it. That is why we called them back. This could have been handled very easily in those hearings but they chose not to. So we called them back.
The Minister for Health came back and answered questions. There was nothing wrong with the minister’s performance. She gave straightforward answers, some of which appeared to contradict what the Planning Minister was saying.
Ms Gallagher: No, they did not.
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