Page 2652 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 23 June 2009
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the virtues of the independence and the importance of the Auditor-General’s role in Australia.
We have seen strong advocates for the role of the Auditor-General from, for example, Tony Harris, who has been our adviser on the estimates committee here, the former Auditor-General in New South Wales. He has been no shrinking violet when it comes to upholding the importance of the Auditor-General’s role. But when someone is a current serving Auditor-General, they have no capacity to respond to the blatant threats that we saw last week and it is incumbent upon us in this place to come to the defence of the Auditor-General and call the Chief Minister to book.
The Chief Minister needs to come down here, while we are discussing the line in the budget about the Auditor-General, and either put up or shut up. He either needs to come down here and say in this place, yes, he does intend to take the whip to the Auditor-General’s office or he needs to come down here now and—as I suspect what happened was that he had a rush of blood to the head, he was feeling trapped, he was feeling cornered and he did what he always does: he lashed out—while we are discussing this line, apologise to the Assembly, apologise to the Auditor-General and apologise to the people of the ACT for his unreasonable outburst the other day, which has not gone unnoticed. His behaviour was appalling and he needs to do the right thing and rectify his behaviour.
MR SESELJA (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (11.25): The role of the Auditor-General is a critically important one and it is worth reflecting on Jon Stanhope’s attitude, as has been touched on by other members, to the Auditor-General. It is reflective of a pattern of behaviour from the Chief Minister in relation to umpires. The Chief Minister, when the umpire makes a decision that he does not like, lashes out at the umpire. We see that time and time again, and we see it from this government. Mr Rattenbury referred, I think, only briefly, in passing, to the disgraceful attack we saw last week from the ALP, particularly Mr Corbell, on the Speaker and on the integrity of the Speaker in this place. And this is part of that pattern.
We happen to believe that sometimes the Speaker will get it wrong and that indeed there will be legitimate criticisms of a Speaker. But the Auditor-General is even another step removed from the role of the Speaker. The Speaker is someone who is elected. The Auditor-General is someone who I have never seen any evidence to suggest—and I challenge the Chief Minister and anyone else who wants to raise that criticism—is in any way biased, in any way biased to one side of politics or against one particular minister or against one particular government. I have never seen one shred of evidence that would in any way back up a claim like that.
But essentially what we get from the Chief Minister when he does not like the findings is an implication that she must be wrong or she must be biased or she must not be doing her job properly and, by the way, let us look at her funding and at whether or not we can cut the funding as a response to her making findings against the government. This is the disgraceful attitude of the Chief Minister towards the Auditor-General.
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