Page 4939 - Week 13 - Thursday, 12 November 2009
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I also say this on the ICRC. Mrs Dunne raised the issue of being able to get documents. As we have said, the ICRC can get documents that will not be censored; they will have unfettered access. Here in the Assembly—yes, you are right, Mrs Dunne—we can call for documents. But, as Mr Rattenbury pointed out, Actew would probably put up a bit of a fight about that, unfortunate as it is. Why not allow the organisation, the ICRC, who can get those documents without any complication, to go ahead, get the documents, do the work and report publicly?
Mr Baxter was very impressive on the radio this morning. He spoke about the fact that he can have public hearings and can have people putting in submissions. I think he was very happy for the Liberal Party to put a submission into that inquiry. Maybe I am verballing a bit, but I think he quite encouraged the Liberal Party to put a submission into that inquiry. I think that is probably the way it needs to go rather than our having an inquiry with lots of issues surrounding access to documents, expertise and so forth, and asking Mr Baxter to put a submission into an Assembly inquiry.
What we as the Greens have come up with—which we discussed and got support for from the government, which I am very pleased about—is a sensible, proper way forward to really be getting to the bottom of the cost blow-out of the dam. It is an outrage to talk about “behind closed doors” terms of reference, as Mr Rattenbury clearly pointed out.
Mr Rattenbury, I will pick up your point. Members of the opposition were chatting, laughing and not listening, so they probably missed this part of your speech. You did point out that many of the terms of reference, or parts of the terms of reference, match up with what Mr Seselja has put out as things that he would like investigated. That is a point that does need to be made again: many of the concerns or issues that you wanted to investigate will in fact be investigated as part of the terms of reference.
This is a good way forward. The Greens will certainly be staying on top of this issue. We still believe that there are some questions that need to be answered. In the first instance, we will be taking up that opportunity during the annual report hearings. And we will be watching with interest the inquiry that will be conducted by the ICRC. I believe the ICRC are already meeting with Actew this morning; that will be getting underway.
We will be keeping a careful eye on it. It is a serious and complicated matter. I am pleased that here in the Assembly there are serious and intelligent people who are able to work through this issue.
MR SESELJA (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (11.32), in reply: The headline in today’s Canberra Times really sums up what we have seen: “Greens and government work out terms of dam inquiry”. They did not have the courage to actually bring it back to the Assembly, as they said they would. That was the position that was put—that they were going to bring this to the Assembly to look at the terms of reference for the ICRC, yet they did not do that.
In fact, the only reason we are debating this today is that we pushed this issue. Indeed, I understand that the Greens were even looking for a procedural way of preventing us
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