Page 453 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 23 February 2010
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undertake to write, as appropriate, to the committee to correct that. That is clearly a misspeaking on my part, and I acknowledge it.
But the issue here is that, unless there is something else in the Hansard which I have not picked up, the government wants to involve me in a privilege inquiry because of a misspeaking which I acknowledge—and this is the first opportunity I have had to acknowledge it, and I acknowledge it—and I undertake to make a full review of the Hansard to make sure that there is nothing else.
This shows how fallacious the government’s approach is. This is what members of parliament and officials do. If they make a mistake, they correct the record. It is perhaps strictly true that, by misspeaking, I may have misled the committee, but once that error was pointed out I fixed it up.
The issue in relation to Mr Sullivan—and it has been clearly set out here by a number of speakers—by myself, by Ms Bresnan, by Mr Seselja—is that Mr Sullivan could not have forgotten, when he was speaking to the estimates committee in May, that five days before that he had been authorised to spend $149 million. He could not have forgotten that, and his answer to my question the other day was that he accepted the premise of my question. I said: “Why did you say that the TOC was not finalised when it had been finalised?” He accepted that that is what he said and he went on to say, “Because it was not commercially convenient to do so.” He accepted the premise of the question. He accepted that he had been caught out misleading the committee.
Mr Stanhope and Mr Corbell said that this is a cowardly attack, under privilege, of an official. I have said no more in this place than I have already said publicly, out there, in press releases and in interviews. This is not a cowardly attack. This is the bringing to book of someone who, by his own admission, gave misleading information. The Assembly processes cannot function if we allow anyone—a member of this place, an official, large or small, a member of the community—to come into a committee hearing, to appear before the bar of the Assembly, or for us, in the Assembly, to say things which we know are misleading or to say things which are misleading and then refuse to correct the record. The system cannot operate.
I have had conversations over the past few days, following the media coverage of this issue, with a number of people who are large and small operators, who know how the committee system works, who know what is expected of public officials, who are public officials, who have been public officials and, to a man and a woman, they are gobsmacked that a public official would admit that he gave misleading information to a committee. And they would be gobsmacked if this Assembly did nothing to address that.
I think they would be gobsmacked to learn that the government does not think that this is an important issue. I think the words the Chief Minister used were “a trifling issue”. This is not a trifling issue. It is a very, very difficult issue. It is a very important issue for us because we, today and through this process, establish what is appropriate behaviour for officials and witnesses generally before the committee system and, in doing so, we establish a doctrine of what is appropriate behaviour for members in this place.
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