Page 3469 - Week 09 - Thursday, 20 August 2009
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improperly for personal advantage, and that any conflict between personal interests and public duty which may arise is resolved in favour of the public interest. Ministers are to ensure that publicly funded publicity that they arrange or approve is relevant to Government responsibilities and is not party political in tone.
Some public statements have been made by a minister in this place that I would like to correct for the record today, statements which show complete disregard for the obligations I have just outlined. On Tuesday just past, Minister Barr flouted convention by seeking leave to make a statement. Of course, this was for all accounts and purposes a ministerial statement without notice. We do know why the minister did not want to give us notice—there were falsehoods in what he said, and he knew he could not get away with it if we, the opposition and the crossbench, had received the required notice.
Let me now go back to the code of conduct:
Ministers will treat other Members of the Legislative Assembly, members of the public and other officials honestly and fairly, with proper regard for their personal dignity, rights, entitlements, duties and obligations …
I feel personally affronted that the minister has chosen to extrapolate an argument that I put forward to him in such a dishonest and unfair way. The statement in question was my argument that the human rights principles of students with a disability in the non-government sector were being compromised by the government for not including them in the special education review, commonly known as the Shaddock review. The minister has chosen to spin a tale from this—he has chosen to take any words I chose to use so out of context that it now bears no resemblance to my original premise.
To make matters worse, Minister Barr has chosen to perpetuate this falsehood to stakeholders in a letter, ostensibly in the form of a response, to the Non-Government Schools Education Council, stating:
I have made abundantly clear in the Legislative Assembly that the government opposes suggestions by the Liberal Party’s spokesman that I should use the Human Rights Act 2004 as a way of the government taking over non-government school teaching and curriculum …
This is a complete fabrication by the minister, a calculated fabrication that ignores truth, honesty and, most damningly, any thought or care about his ministerial responsibility.
For the record, I totally reject the minister’s statement, as I did in the Assembly last Tuesday, that this suggestion was ever made by me. I have never in any way made any suggestion that the government take over non-government teaching and curriculum. The minister has misled the Non-Government Schools Education Council and this place in a very calculated, dishonest and mischievous fashion.
I have been verballed in a most underhanded way and in a typical, tactical manoeuvre by a person who claims to be the right choice to lead the ALP and become the Chief Minister of the ACT. If playing dirty, shooting from the hip and using any tool within
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