Page 2113 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 22 June 2010
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MR HANSON (Molonglo) (11.22): I agree with what Ms Le Couteur said—that the focus today should be on the scrutiny of the government. The focus should be on the scrutiny of the government, but it is not. Why is it not? That is the question. We should be going into the detail of the failings of this government. When I look at the areas under my portfolios I see the litany of problems in health and corrections. The disaster that has become corrections under Simon Corbell is the conversation that we should be having. Why we are not is the direct responsibility of Meredith Hunter and the report that she has tabled here today, which has utterly failed to scrutinise the government.
John Hargreaves is up the back there laughing his head off. The ministers sitting there probably have a bit of a smirk on their faces because they know full well that the report that has been tabled by Meredith Hunter, the chair of this committee, fails to provide any reasonable scrutiny of their government. That is why we are having a conversation about the report rather than a conversation about the government, which is where the comments from the Liberals and the Greens should be directed. But there has not been one single comment from the three members of the crossbench who have spoken today about the government. They have not even provided any commentary on the budget. Their entire commentary was about defending their report and attacking the Liberals.
If you need any evidence, Madam Deputy Speaker, of where the priorities of the Greens sit, you might ask: is it about defending their pack? Is it about defending the government and attacking the Liberals? I think the comprehensive evidence here today on where the priorities of the Greens sit is very disappointing. There is no doubt in my mind that this is a government that has become uncaring and self-serving. It is, by and large, incompetent. There is no question that the government, through this budget, is failing the community in those specific areas and as a whole by failing to provide any reasonable plan for this territory in the coming years.
I hear the Greens chattering up the back there, but I do wonder—and the community is starting to wonder—what the Greens stand for under Meredith Hunter. One thing they do not stand for is scrutiny of this government. If it is not scrutiny of the government, what is it that they stand for? That is the question that I increasingly get asked. People on my side of politics were concerned that with the advent of the Greens we would see some radicalisation of the policy, but we have not seen that. What we have seen, almost, is nothing. We have seen nothing in regard to scrutiny and we have seen very little from the Greens in terms of comprehensive policy. Again, we see evidence of that today in this chamber.
As a consequence of the failures in the report, the Liberals have provided—and I commend Zed Seselja, the Leader of the Opposition, and the shadow treasurer, Brendan Smyth, for the report they have provided—a report that I will look forward to going through in significant detail. But let me address some of the failings that I have gone through, both from my involvement within the committee process and by scanning through the report.
Turning firstly to health, what is clear from the report and from my involvement in the committee process is that there has been no improvement in health under the guidance
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