Page 2807 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 24 June 2009
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for a gas-fired power station and data centre: site selection process. We know the government did not like that one, but of course that was a very important report, given the sketchy information we were getting and the misleading information we were getting from government.
It is important that we have an Auditor-General who is adequately resourced to come in on these issues. If you run down the funding, it is those kinds of things that will not get done because they simply will not have the resources to do them. I suspect that is exactly what this government wants.
We can go through 2007. There was The FireLink project, which showed us how much money the government had wasted on a FireLink project which was never delivered, a communications project which was never delivered. I think it was around $5 million simply wasted. Of course, if it was not for an Auditor-General’s report we would not have had the kind of detail that we otherwise would have.
The question for the government becomes this: which of those are not important? Is it respite care that is not important? Is it road safety that is not important? Is it ambulance services that are not important, that we are happy to not see audited? And we know that there are many more that they could be doing. That is what the Auditor-General has told us—that they are way behind even on current funding. And, as it gets run down more, they will be further behind because they will be cutting the number of audits by one or two, down to as little as six per year—six per year.
We do see that this Chief Minister has form. That is why it is very important that some of what is in the motion does set the scene. We quote the Chief Minister. We know he has form in attacking independent individuals who find against him—and nowhere more than Coroner Doogan. We know that Jon Stanhope initially praised Coroner Doogan. He described Doogan as “an excellent coroner and an excellent magistrate; somebody who will do a thorough job”. He said:
I respect the separation of powers—it is a very significant doctrine … There is to be absolutely no suggestion that this government seeks to undermine or affect the independence of the judiciary in the pursuance of its duties in any way whatsoever.
It is worth reflecting on that comment for a moment in the context of the Chief Minister backing away from his criticism of the Auditor-General and now claiming that actually, no, he does not want to undermine the Auditor-General; he was not attacking the Auditor-General. That is what he said about the coroner—that there is “no suggestion that this government seeks to undermine or affect the independence of the judiciary”. Of course, that changed very quickly when he did not like how the coronial was going. He did not like—
Mr Stanhope: How did the appeal go? How did the Supreme Court go with the appeal?
MR SESELJA: Well, it is interesting. What did they find about the apprehended bias? Did they find that Coroner Doogan had bias? How did apprehended bias go? No,
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