Page 2096 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 22 June 2010
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comprehensively failed to manage the budget over many years. And I think that was the problem. I think that was why Ms Hunter had to change tack this year. Instead of sending Ms Le Couteur to ask hard questions and analyse, she decided that it would be better if she took the chair; it would be better if she came in and did the scrutiny herself.
What a wonderful example it was—from start to finish, we saw a majority of the committee that was determined to shut down the scrutiny. We saw, in fact, a chair who actually wanted to prevent us from asking detailed or multi-part questions. That was what the chair wanted at the beginning. In fact, it was only because the balance of power—Mr Hargreaves—did not support her on that one that we actually were allowed to ask some detailed and multi-part questions.
One would have thought that it would be the Greens who had the balance of power in a situation like this, but apparently not. So it started with that, and it ended with a draft report which Mr Hargreaves referred to as being great for the government. No wonder he referred to it as being great for the government, because, if ever there was a crystallisation of the fact that, under Ms Hunter’s leadership, this is a Greens-Labor alliance, this process demonstrated that right across the board.
It is worth going into some of what is not in the report and why we got to the point where we had to develop our own report. Ms Hunter, in fact, engaged in what was described by Mr Hargreaves as a radical departure. In terms of the draft report, she talked about doing things as other jurisdictions do them where there tends to be a majority government, where there is less scrutiny. We have had a long and proud tradition in this Assembly of strong scrutiny of the government. Unfortunately, Ms Hunter decided in the report process to go down the path that was designed to limit that scrutiny.
Ms Hunter said the previous reports were too broad and that that sort of broad scrutiny should occur in other forms like annual reports hearings. They were too broad, too long, had too many questions, too much scrutiny and she was having none of it. We were left with no choice but to develop our own report which actually looked at all of the issues that we saw as particularly significant or controversial or notable within the committee process this year.
Ms Hunter mentioned some of the community groups. It is worth actually reflecting on some of the sanitisation of the evidence of some of the community groups. The kinship carers came, and Ms Le presented very strong evidence to the committee. This was noteworthy for a number of reasons. It was noteworthy for the strength of conviction expressed by Ms Le, but it was also noteworthy because of the respect that Ms Le has for her advocacy for many disadvantaged people in our community, including refugees, over many years.
Ms Le’s evidence was shocking; it was confronting. But that is not reflected in the main report. Ms Le said:
Do you know how serious I think this is? I spoke out about children in detention, and I said that that was abusive. I believe that what is going on here—this is very strong, and I will stand by it—is abusive. I believe it is systematic and institutionalised abuse. And people do not even see it any more.
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