Page 4548 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 19 October 2010
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choose one of the other 38 weeks of the year in order to take his leave, I think is unacceptable. There are plenty of breaks available. There is a six-week break in the winter recess and there is a nine-week break in the summer recess. He has plenty of time and opportunity to take his holidays, and that is the convention of this place. That is when everybody takes their holidays. That is a long-established convention of this Assembly.
It is not that Mr Stanhope has not had holidays. He does take holidays. Indeed, I recall that, as recently as the summer break, Mr Stanhope was on leave and the Deputy Chief Minister stepped up to the role. So I do consider, and my colleagues consider, that he is out of touch with the people of Canberra if he thinks that this is acceptable behaviour. And the people of Canberra will rightly question his priorities. I believe it is a failure in leadership and I believe it is arrogant. It suggests to me that the Chief Minister is either distracted from his duties or tired of his job, and neither is an acceptable situation.
Mr Speaker, I can think of no other example in recent history of a leader of a government taking leave during a parliamentary sitting such as this. You can think of John Howard, Paul Keating, Bob Hawke, Tony Blair or Peter Beattie. I can think of no leader of a government that sits in a parliamentary Westminster-style democracy that has chosen to prioritise a holiday over a sitting period.
Can you imagine, Mr Speaker, if John Howard, in the ninth year of his prime ministership, had decided that he was going to go on a jaunt in Europe and prioritise that over a sitting in the federal parliament? Can you imagine the outrage? The outrage would have come from the Greens, from Labor and, I would imagine, from the media.
If this occurred today in New South Wales, can you imagine the response that you would see from the media, from those in New South Wales that have commentary and are sitting in the parliament, if a premier of New South Wales decided to miss sittings so that they could go on holiday? What would happen is that they would be rightly roasted by the media. I can guarantee that the Premier of New South Wales would not have his or her job when they came back to the parliament. Those are the established protocols of Western democracy everywhere. I can think of no example. If you can come up with one, let me know. This is exceptional and extraordinary behaviour by the Chief Minister.
In my view, if you look at the response from Labor and the Greens, and from some people outside this place who have been commenting, the comparison between what would occur in any other situation and what is occurring here in the ACT is just remarkable, and you have to question whether the response is balanced.
I also think that it is rude, arrogant and discourteous that leave is being sought in this place several weeks after the Chief Minister left the country. Would you accept, Mr Speaker, or would any of the ministers accept, that your staff would disappear overseas on a holiday and then get someone else to stand up and ask for leave for them three weeks after they have left? It is not the normal form of this place. It is extraordinary, and it shows an absolute disregard for the conventions of this place and arrogance towards the people of the ACT.
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