Page 822 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 16 March 2010
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It is against this backdrop that today we need to make a decision about whether, in regard to complaints made by insulation consumers and potential consumers in the ACT, the minister persistently and wilfully misled the Assembly.
Essentially, the debate we are talking about here today does, I think, focus on the finer semantics of what the minister said in the chamber rather than the insulation debacle, or whether the ACT government upheld its duty in relation to the health and wellbeing of its citizens. Indeed, the debate on the latter we have already had in this chamber. At that time, I made it clear that I believed the ACT should have taken a more proactive approach to ensure safety standards were upheld than what was a rather hands-off approach to the issue of potential safety concerns. The ACT government should have been clearly aware that concerns were raised about the safety issues. Indeed, minutes from a meeting held between officials from state, territory and commonwealth governments indicate that they did know this, but that they did not specifically warn about the dangers of the rollout of the insulation program. Failing to disclose that risk to installers and the community as soon as is practicable should be acknowledged as a failure.
But it appears that against a backdrop of exceedingly serious allegations about poor workplace safety standards, poor occupational health and safety and massively dangerous situations occurring across the country, we are today reduced to a debate about what constitutes “dodgy” insulation here in the ACT.
Opposition members interjecting—
MR RATTENBURY: Now, I do not want to appear frivolous here, because this is not a frivolous issue.
Opposition members interjecting—
MADAM ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ms Le Couteur): Members of the opposition, please let Mr Rattenbury speak in silence.
MR RATTENBURY: As I said, this is not a frivolous issue, but the word “dodgy” comes with many meanings—everything from evasive, shifty, unsound and unreliable, to risky, weird, deviant and dishonest. But, of course, while it could mean any of those things, it is clear that context affects meaning so much.
The question is: did the minister, in providing information to the Assembly about the nature of complaints that have been received here in the ACT, include all complaints in his use of the words “dodgy” and “poor” in the answers that he provided to the Assembly that day, and did he fail to inform the Assembly about documents that were available on the issue of insulation?
On the issue of complaints raised in question time, the minister’s statement in response to a question is clear—that there had been no complaints about unsafe installation of insulation. He said:
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