Page 5364 - Week 14 - Thursday, 19 November 2009
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Mr Corbell: Findings that have no evidence to back them up.
MR SESELJA: And he continues in his interjections. He is claiming some sort of politically motivated attack, it would seem.
Mr Corbell: It is a sham.
MR SESELJA: It is a sham, he says. So he is saying that his own colleague, his own Labor party colleague, has engaged in a sham in order to damage him in this place. That is the only finding. That is the only thing we can take from those comments, which Mr Corbell continues to make in his interjections: that every member of this committee was engaged in a sham, that this was a sham process that presumably was a politically motivated attack on him.
That is an extraordinary attack and an extraordinary display of division between Mr Corbell and yourself in this place, Madam Deputy Speaker. We can see why he is so tender as we look through these findings. These finding do not reflect well on the Attorney-General. Any claim of a politically motivated attack is completely undermined by the fact that this is a tripartisan, unanimous report. It simply does not stack up. If we look briefly at some of the findings, finding No 11 states:
At the time of the official opening, the Minister for Corrective Services was not well briefed on delays in completing the AMC …
He claimed that he was well briefed. In his contribution he claimed that he was. So he went ahead with the sham opening, even though he was well briefed on the fact that there were going to be significant delays. You cannot have it both ways. Either the briefing fell down or, if we are to believe the minister, he was briefed, and then he decided, despite being well briefed on this issue, to go ahead with the sham opening anyway.
It needs to be put into context. This is a government that has failed to deliver infrastructure; it has failed to deliver major projects. We saw it in the context of the election with the GDE and with the prison. It needed something to open. It desperately needed something to open before the election, and Mr Corbell, despite the fact that it was not ready, despite the fact that this prison was not finished, went ahead and had the sham opening anyway. That is what he did. That is why he is so tender—because he has been caught out. And he has not just been caught out by his political opponent in Mrs Dunne; he has been caught out by the entire committee. He has been caught out by the Greens and the Labor Party in this investigation, in this committee inquiry.
This disgraceful defence, this desperate defence, of attacking his own Labor Party colleagues highlights, firstly, his desperation and, secondly, the serious divisions that are now opening up in this place between Mr Corbell and indeed some of his right faction opponents, including Ms Porter.
The report goes on. In terms of briefings, finding No 14 states:
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