Page 4940 - Week 13 - Thursday, 12 November 2009
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from moving this motion. They have been desperate not to have this debate in the Assembly. They have been desperate not to bring these terms of reference before us for debate. What was the problem with that? What was the problem with their position from Friday? Why did that become the wrong position by Friday afternoon, Monday or whenever the final decision was made not to move this motion?
You claim that it is about being open and transparent, yet you do not even want to bring those terms of reference to the Assembly for debate. As I say, the only reason we are even talking about this issue today is that we have brought it forward, with opposition from the government and the Greens.
Indeed, we are seeing this more and more. We saw it on schools. We saw it in relation to the schools debate, where even the debate was gagged. We are seeing this time and time again. There was an attempt in this case to find a procedural way to prevent this from going ahead, and I am pleased that failed so that we could actually put some of the issues on the table again.
In the end, instead of bringing it to the Assembly so that we could debate the terms of reference and see how wide they are, they have stitched up a deal with the Labor Party. They need to be honest about the fact that this is becoming more and more the case. You can pretend that you are genuinely a crossbench, but if you do everything through negotiation outside of this place then the outcome will be that the Labor Party and the Greens in the end will be jointly responsible for these outcomes. They will be responsible for a lot of what goes on in government.
I know they are desperate not to take responsibility, but in the end, as we move through these issues, there will be this joint responsibility between the Labor Party and the Greens as they continue to stitch up deals outside of the Assembly. That is what has happened on the ICRC. The terms of reference were not brought to this place for debate; they were agreed between the Labor Party and the Greens. And because they are not going to be as wide as they should be, it will be the Labor Party and the Greens who have jointly made a decision to prevent the thorough scrutiny that we should have.
We will continue to push for this in every forum that is available to us, but we have seen this pattern of behaviour on the dam and on other issues, where they would much prefer to have quiet negotiations somewhere else rather than have an open debate in the Assembly. This is the latest example of that, and it is a very disappointing outcome to that extent.
We will continue to push for this, and we will continue to ask those questions. We will be the only party in the Assembly that continues constantly to ask questions of the government, hold the government to account, and not always look to find a way to make it easier for the government or for a way of having a quiet discussion somewhere, rather than in this forum, which is where we need to have these serious debates.
Ms Hunter’s contribution on this issue was that there was an implication that there is not the intelligence or the ability in the Assembly. You could make that argument for
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