Page 3298 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 19 August 2009
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As well, the Greens also opposed this bill, again for very sound reasons. The Assembly duly rejected the bill. This decision caught the government off guard as the abolition of the board had been built into the 2009-10 budget, which of course was very presumptuous on behalf of the government, and they clearly had time to debate the bill before the budget was finalised. This minister clearly did not like this decision and he set about putting in place a strategy to circumvent the intention of the Assembly decision.
Indeed, the deviousness of this minister started to become evident in questioning during the 2009 estimates hearings. The minister did not provide straight answers to questioning about what his intentions were about the board of the corporation. His comments in response to the Assembly’s decision to reject his bill included:
I am obviously taking advice in relation to what the Assembly vote means in terms of the future of the organisation.
He then said:
We will, of course, adhere to all of the requirements under the Exhibition Park Act … We will continue to have a board.
However, he made no explicit mention of his intention that we saw, subsequently, in his announcement of 29 June 2009. On 29 June, his intentions became evident. The minister provided his answer to the Assembly’s decision. He flouted that decision by promulgating an instrument that appointed four public servants to the corporation’s board and appointed one of those as chair and another as deputy chair.
Also, we know that the only reason there would be a prospective saving of $50,000 a year was that the minister intended to stop paying board members for their work. What we did not know then was that the payment for the board members is made from the corporation’s own revenues.
So there was no reform and there was no financial saving, only this minister’s devious agenda. What a joke! What a reformist!
We also know that the former board of the corporation had prepared a master plan for EPIC and that part of this plan apparently called for the development of low and medium-cost accommodation. Subsequently, the Stanhope-Gallagher government denied the board the opportunity to develop their concept of affordable accommodation and then pinched the idea as their own. And this is so typical of the Stanhope-Gallagher government. Others come up with the good ideas, the Stanhope-Gallagher government appropriates those ideas and, in the case of the corporation, denies it the potential to generate more revenue to underpin the activities of the corporation.
I must finally respond to the war that the minister has waged against at least some members of the former board. In the estimates hearing on 27 May 2009, the minister could not bring himself to speak favourably about the board. He said:
I offer no comment in relation to the performance of the previous board.
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