Page 2720 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 23 June 2009
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MR HARGREAVES: Thanks very much, Madam Assistant Speaker. When we talk about the Auditor-General, which is what Mrs Dunne wanted me to do, I thought it was a pretty low act actually on Mrs Dunne’s part to draw the distinction about the personality of the Auditor-General into the debate in this chamber. I had thought better of her. I did not really think that was necessary, because the inference was quite offensive—very much so.
The fact of the matter with regard to the amounts of money that we would hope will be appropriated to the Auditor-General is that the amounts of money will enable effective scrutiny of the systems of government. The Chief Minister and the cabinet have not asked the Auditor-General to examine a one per cent efficiency dividend. Rather, the Auditor-General has been asked how, in fact, those same resources can be used more effectively. There is nothing wrong with asking the chief executives of all government departments to examine the way they do things to see if they can be done more effectively within the resources envelope that they are given.
I think, quite seriously, Madam Assistant Speaker, that those opposite ought to be a little bit quiet about their contradiction in terms of attacking senior officers. I do not think it is doing them any favours at all. In fact, it is exposing them a tad, and I would not like to see them upset or hurt in the public arena. As you know, I do not like to see people on that side of the house reduced to tears from their own folly. So I would say to them over there: you have gone public and said you are not going to support the budget; fine, you can vote against it when it comes to the total if you wish, but I might in fact—
Mr Hanson: Thank you, John. That is very generous of you.
MR HARGREAVES: I know; I am the most generous of souls. But I also would point to the history of it. They say, “Well, you blokes did not vote for it when you were in opposition.”
Mr Hanson: Six times.
MR HARGREAVES: Indeed, I draw Mr Hanson’s attention to those pages of history and invite him to go and have a look at the voting on the line items of those budgets, because, in fact, the Labor opposition did not vote against all of the line items. They did vote against them in total, because of one inalienable fact: it was a budget being produced by the Liberal government and therefore we viewed it with some suspicion. And so much suspicion was actually warranted, because when we came to government in 2001 we found some horror stories in the back rooms, the back dungeons, of their paperwork. We found that they had reduced public housing stock by 1,000 units, for example—we did not know that before that—and so we quite rightly viewed their budgets and their operations with suspicion. But we did not do it on every single budget line item.
Mr Seselja: Nor have we, John.
MR HARGREAVES: Well, you have been tested today already and we will see. We will see. The challenge is whether you are going to be just a bunch of glove puppets
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