Page 286 - Week 01 - Thursday, 11 February 2010
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Here is the way that I propose that we give it to you. I understand that there have been a range of hearings in camera. I would like to provide this information to you on a confidential basis.” It may have changed the tenor of the report; we have no idea.
Mr Stanhope: You’d already made up your mind.
MRS DUNNE: At this stage we have not really had an opportunity to fully peruse the information. The minister contends that everything that the committee saw was seen by the independent arbiter; all the same questions that were asked by the committee were asked by the independent arbiter. I wonder how the minister would know that, because he was not at many of the in-camera hearings; so he would not know that. But he did assert that yesterday, and that there is some flaw in the process that is the fault of the members of the committee through this process, the implication being that it was a done deal, and it is quite clear from the interjection from the Chief Minister saying that this was a done deal.
This, of course, goes to why this motion was introduced in the first place. This motion was brought about mainly because of the lack of regard that this government, that this executive, has for the committee process in this place. The Chief Minister spends his time chipping and sniping about the committee process. Every time there is a suggestion there might be a committee inquiry into that he says, “Where are we going to get the money for that?” The committee process is constantly under pressure through lack of resources, through constrained resources, and the Chief Minister does not simply care about that because committees are inconvenient for this Chief Minister. Committees in this place over successive Assemblies have been an embarrassment for the Chief Minister because they have shown up failings in his government, failings in his personal administration.
Mr Stanhope: Name one.
MRS DUNNE: The gas-fired power station. Let us name one. The AMC. Let us name another. And all the problems in relation to the gas-fired power station came out through the estimates process, through consistent questioning of officials that resulted in the unprecedented event of the committee being written to by officials to be told that they had given us wrong information and for ministers and officials to have to be recalled to set the record straight.
We have had other incidents in relation to the respect that the Chief Minister shows to the committees where, in response to committee questioning, the Chief Minister wrote what can only be described as phlegmatic letters to members of the building community in an attempt to defame members of the estimates committee inquiry and, again, that issue had to be addressed directly by the estimates committee.
This process and this motion here today are really to try to bring the government to heel and to require of them that they show the respect for the committee process that is necessary, that is set out in their ministerial code of conduct and in the forms and conventions of parliaments across the commonwealth and across the world where the Westminster system is regarded and upheld. On the basis of that, we will not be supporting the government’s amendment today.
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