Page 1657 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 4 May 2010
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Unfortunately, from this minister all we got was laughter at this very serious motion. All we got was rhetoric. All we got was a further attack on the committee that had the temerity to hold him to account. In fact, what we got from the minister was no shouldering of the blame, no acceptance of his responsibility, certainly no apology, and certainly no clear rebuttal of the statements in the motion. The minister should be censured.
MR STANHOPE (Ginninderra—Chief Minister, Minister for Transport, Minister for Territory and Municipal Services, Minister for Business and Economic Development, Minister for Land and Property Services, Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs and Minister for the Arts and Heritage) (10.58): This is a blatantly political motion on a very significant day in the life of any parliament and of this Assembly—namely, the day in which the budget is being delivered. It is quite clearly a motion that was designed and constructed out of thin air for a political purpose.
It is a pity, I think, and a reflection on the Liberal Party, that their attempts at diverting attention from their lack of commitment to this place, their lack of view or vision or of any idea about the future of the ACT, is reflected increasingly in constant motions of censure. The minister actually opened his response to the motion essentially with, “Another day, another censure motion,” and that is what it has become.
This particular censure motion, of course, reaches a very new low point in relation to the sort of opaque stunt making by an opposition completely bereft of any idea—or any work ethic. You never see any of them around the place. None of them are working. I must say I cannot recall an opposition of less energy or of less commitment to work or to the community than this opposition.
To the substance: there are some questions that a motion such as this begs in relation to the attitude and the response of the movers of the motion, the proponents. It is fair and it is appropriate to ask, “What would you have done? What was your solution? What was your attitude? What was your policy? What is your policy?”
Mrs Dunne: It’s not about policy. It’s actually about the performance of the minister.
MR STANHOPE: It is. It is important in the context of a motion such as this—a censure motion, a motion that calls on a minister, the responsible minister, to be removed from a portfolio—to benchmark, to have some understanding of what the other side would do, those that are making this extraordinary claim.
So what was the attitude—what is and has been the attitude—of this opposition over the last decade? Their policy position, which they have taken to a number of elections, was to not build a prison in the ACT. Their policy, their position, is one of opposition to the Alexander Maconochie Centre. Their policy position was to maintain the Belconnen Remand Centre, a centre which the human rights commissioner has ruled on as completely lacking in human rights compliance, completely, totally unfit for purpose.
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