Page 4003 - Week 09 - Thursday, 26 August 2010
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was in my office typing a response, which is here with me. I thought I would get it through before the call; I thought that I would have the chance to get to it. I thought those opposite would give me the chance when I walked in the door to seek the call.
Mr Speaker, the Liberals, as we know through Mr Coe, have asked me to correct the record in relation to a question last week on the older persons units. I stand by my earlier comments that I was referring to the assessment process, which is complete. However, to be clear and correct and to avoid further correction—
Mr Coe: “They are complete.”
MS BURCH: I am correcting the record, Mr Coe, if that is what you want me to do. Both the Macquarie and Curtin sites are under construction. For the Macquarie and Curtin sites, the assessment is complete and the allocation process is being progressed. I have corrected the record. I accept that there was confusion and I have made a mistake. I am here to correct the record. I just would have appreciated to have been able to walk into this place and make that statement.
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) (10.17): I rise to speak only briefly to this matter. Ms Burch has outlined quite succinctly the sequence of events that occurred this morning. Caucus met until quarter to 10. Ms Burch, upon leaving that, received a copy of a letter that had been delivered this morning. She immediately—she has shown me her response to that particular letter from Mr Coe—sat down and typed out a statement, which she has just essentially read to the Assembly, accepting that comments she made in answer to a question have been misconstrued. The interpretation that has been taken of what she said is not what she intended.
We all say things that perhaps are ambiguous or not particularly clear in our expression. Ms Burch has acknowledged that comments that she made in relation to an answer to a question did have the capacity to convey a meaning that she did not intend. She has just clarified that. She would have done that at 10 o’clock, subject to the ringing of the bells, had she received the call first. She did not. Indeed, in retrospect, that is something she may have arranged with your office or with the Clerk, Mr Speaker, before the commencement of proceedings. But, in the context of having been in caucus pursuing business, receiving a letter at quarter to 10, and typing out a statement acknowledging the capacity for her comments to have misled, she has stood and has unambiguously acknowledged that fact.
This censure motion is, I guess, just to complete the record of Liberal Party censures of one a sitting week, and they needed one this week. It was a no-confidence motion last week and it was a censure the sitting week before that. Of course, we cannot get through a sitting week any more without at least a censure or a no-confidence motion. I guess the Liberal Party really had to maintain their quota of censures by finding some spurious reason.
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