Page 5221 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 18 November 2009
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ACT Tourism Minister Andrew Barr has been embarrassingly forced to dismiss a member of the Exhibition Park board because he had appointed one too many.
Living up to its name, the EPIC board will undergo yet another change today when Mr Barr dumps his recent appointee, ACTION buses business manager Liz Clarke, from the board to bring the numbers within the law.
This is a minister who says he and his department should be in control. He is telling us we should trust him; we do not need independent boards. But he cannot even get the numbers right. He cannot even count to nine in order to get the numbers right. The numbers man of the right cannot get the numbers right. This is the man who would want to have control. So we have a situation where he did not comply with the spirit of what the Assembly said. The Assembly gave a very clear intent that they wanted an independent board. So he tried to go around that, and he did not even comply with the letter of the law. And this is a minister who claims that he should be in control.
The story in the Canberra Times goes on:
Mr Barr only dumped Ms Clarke from the board after The Canberra Times told his office that the public service appointments had taken the number of board members to 10, above the maximum number of nine that is allowed under the Exhibition Park Corporation Act.
It is embarrassing when these kinds of things happen. But it is made far worse because of the way he has conducted himself throughout this process. It is not just one error here. It is an error in the context of a minister who has been given a clear indication from the Assembly and he has ignored it. He has gone on the radio and tried to claim that he did not sack board members when he did, and he has been caught out. Mr Smyth’s comments in the Canberra Times are actually worth putting into Hansard because they sum it up very well:
“This whole affair now leaves the minister’s credibility in tatters. This is just basic government function: getting the number of members on a board right,” Mr Smyth said.
“This is why we have to take control of [EPIC] from this man, he’s not capable of running it.
“He’s not capable, clearly, of counting to nine, and clearly does not understand his legislation.”
Hear, hear to that. Mr Smyth has summed up the position. He has summed up why this legislation is necessary. We now have the situation, of course, where even some of those decisions are called into question. Has there been legal advice and will the minister and the government table the legal advice to say that all of those decisions that were made by the unlawfully constituted board are valid? Are they all invalid? There is a question mark; there is at least a question mark over that. If you do not follow the law in appointing a board, if you cannot get the basics right, there is a serious question mark. So everything has been called into doubt as a result of ministerial interference.
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