Page 158 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 16 February 2011
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I do not believe that we need to come back to the chamber with a statement. We have the annual report system that we can quiz on. We have also got the ability for people to ask questions on notice or without notice. We have also got the multicultural strategy, which has a return to the Assembly clause in it where the minister is required to come back and report on the implementation of the multicultural strategy. In fact, for those concerns that the people might have, there are mechanisms already in place for that reporting back to the Assembly. That is the reason I do it. I do not think Mr Doszpot’s amendment is absolutely necessary.
In terms of the budget, we have got an estimates process which actually occurs and, as I say, you can do it any time you like in the Assembly. I would seek members’ agreement to my amendments to Mr Doszpot’s amendment, and I thank members for their contribution.
MR DOSZPOT (Brindabella) (12.24): I thank Mr Hargreaves for moving the amendments. As we stated before, we will not be supporting the amendments or his original motion. Just looking at the issues that Mr Hargreaves seems to be wanting to cover, they have already been covered in the things that we have put—for instance, promoting mutual respect.
It is on this point of mutual respect that I have to respond to what Mr Hargreaves feels is something I cannot let go of—the Al Grassby statue. My issue with the Al Grassby statue is not my issue. It is a community concern about who this community respects and who this community looks up to. Mr Hargreaves is wanting to trivialise the stories around Mr Grassby’s latter involvement. I would simply quote from an article in the Australian of 3 March 2007, for the record, to encapsulate why the community is concerned about Mr Hargreaves’s choice of a community icon to put in front of the Theo Notaris Centre, the multicultural centre. The article reads:
The family of murdered anti-drugs campaigner Donald Mackay have joined a campaign against an ACT Government plan to erect a public monument to the late Al Grassby.
The Labor administration, led by Chief Minister Jon Stanhope, commissioned the $72,325 life-size bronze tribute to the former Whitlam Government immigration minister …
Critics have attacked the plan as extravagant and in poor taste because of Grassby’s links to the Calabrian mafia and his intervention in the Donald Mackay murder investigation …
In 1980 Grassby was charged with criminal defamation after allegedly asking a NSW state MP to read out a document in parliament that implied Mackay’s wife Barbara and her family solicitor were responsible for his disappearance. He was acquitted.
On technicalities and on parliamentary privilege.
But after Grassby’s death in 2005, former National Crime Authority investigator Bruce Provost said Grassby had used political pressure to stop an investigation of his mafia links.
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