Page 191 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 16 February 2011
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This censure is being brought forward by an attorney-general who has dropped the ball on this whole issue and has been roundly criticised in the community for his handling of the matter. I have quoted before in this place and will quote at great length today from one person who communicated with me after Mr Corbell put out his press release about this whole matter. Last Monday this constituent said to me:
I wonder how Mr Corbell satisfied himself that;
Mr Roy has acted appropriately and with due regard for the reputation and privacy of those who had contacted him
and that your claims were;
misleading and exaggerated?
That is what Mr Corbell has said. And my constituent went on to say:
I presume this can only be done on the basis of Mr Roy’s assurances!
Extraordinary!
This is precisely the form of accountability that seems to have gotten us into this mess in the first place.
There is nothing that Mr Corbell has said in this place today that would indicate that he did anything other than go to Mr Roy and say, “Tell me about this,” and Mr Roy said, “There is nothing to see here, minister.” And the minister believed him. This censure that has been brought on by the Attorney-General has been brought on by somebody who never looked seriously at the matter and is not interested in seeing that the rights of the staff members in the ACT public service, specifically those at Bimberi, are upheld.
Let us look at Mr Corbell’s cowardly but not entirely unexpected attempt to censure me today. Firstly, he should have done this a lot earlier. Since 4 February he has known that we were going to bring on this motion. The minister uses continuing resolution 7 as a hook for this censure today. He quotes at length from continuing resolution No 7 in the standing orders, which is a reminder to members not to abuse the forms of this place to attack people who cannot defend themselves.
I am not using this place, the Assembly, to prosecute a matter that I am not prepared to prosecute elsewhere. I will now spend a great deal of time pointing out just how I prosecuted this matter before I brought it to this place. I went directly and privately to the commissioner, and the commissioner and I exchanged six pieces of correspondence over December and January. I tabled for members today a timetable of all the things that happened.
On 14 December, I wrote to the commissioner, raising with him the issues that had been raised with me by X that started with a meeting on 14 November, and I asked him for his version of the events because I was concerned about the matters that were
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