Page 5224 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 18 November 2009
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invidious position, by their minister. Their petulant minister has put them in a really invidious position where they are now going to be relieved of their duties, not through any fault of their own but through the fault of their minister.
We need to make it very clear that the only person who stands here being criticised is Andrew Barr, the minister responsible for EPIC—none of the people who as a result of the passage of this bill will be relieved of their duties on that board. We need to make that perfectly clear. We need to make it perfectly clear that we are debating this legislation today because the minister behaved like a petulant child and the minister got it wrong.
MR SMYTH (Brindabella) (4.24), in reply: I thank members for their contributions today. I do say that the actual position of the Labor Party is a little confusing. I thank the Treasurer for her gracious support for what we are attempting to do here. It is quite clear that the Treasurer agrees with some of the arguments that I use about the invidious position that Mr Barr’s actions have put public servants in over conflict of interest. We have the government acknowledgment that Mr Barr actually got it wrong. We all make mistakes. It is about how you correct them.
Ms Gallagher has said: “Let us work through it. We have both got some amendments. Let us get on with the game and make sure that we have a structure set up so that everybody knows how the game is played.” Mr Barr was on an entirely different planet. He trots out the old lines: first and foremost, the Liberal Party has got a bent against the public servants. That is not right. If that statement is true then the Chief Minister also has a bent against public servants. Let me read what the Chief Minister said about independent statutory authorities. Talking about Actew, he said that it—and I quote:
… is an independent statutory authority. We’ve created it to make these sorts of decisions on behalf of the Government because it requires a range of skills and expertise that aren’t necessarily vested in government.
And:
I know nothing about building dams; I know nothing about building pipelines. So, that is why we have an independent statutory authority staffed by the most competent people.
That is what the Chief Minister thought. Minister Barr should listen to his leader more often. What we had from Minister Barr right to the end, right to the bitter end, was self-justification: “Everybody else in the world is against me. I am the only one that got this right.”
He comes in and says, “Mr Smyth’s bill is flawed because he has had to move amendments to his own bill.” One of the amendments I am moving in my bill is because of the fact that Mr Barr could not count to nine. Part of my bill disallows the instrument he put in place on 30 June this year. He had to go and get rid of it because he got it wrong, because he broke the law. You have to have nine members on this board; he put 10 on. This is a minister of the Crown who cannot stop counting at nine. He went to 10. Yes, we do have to amend the bill but it is because of your incompetence, minister, that that particular amendment is in place here.
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