Page 1413 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 6 April 2011
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making it four in total. The average number of censures, including votes of no confidence, over the life of the Assembly by our count is 3.6. The record for any year is seven, from 1991. If we continue at this rate we could reach 14, an Assembly record.
The operation of the AMC is a complex and serious issue and it deserves to be treated in that manner. I think the recent debate has denigrated it. We are talking about people who have possibly just interacted with the health system for the first time in their life; sometimes their adult life, sometimes their whole life. There are problems and I have raised problems over the last couple of years in estimates, annual reports and questions, but we are also pleased to have these independent reports. There are good things and there are bad things in the report, but it needs to be taken as a whole and given due consideration.
I think it is also worth noting that the report says that, despite the difficulties, staff can be proud of what they have actually achieved over the last 12 months, operating in what is a very difficult environment. A prison environment is difficult and we should be giving the staff and the people who work there their due consideration.
MR SESELJA (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (11.56): I commend Mr Hanson for his motion and for his work in this area. This minister does deserve to be censured because what he is overseeing is an absolute shambles of a prison. The prison is clearly, by any measure, now being mismanaged. We have a shambolic government and a shambolic minister in charge of what is now becoming a shambolic institution.
We have to ask the question: why is it that these reports are leaking all over the place? Let us go back to that for a moment. Why is it that this report has been leaked? Why is it that people are coming to the opposition and giving us the government’s reports? Is it because they do not trust the government in their ability to actually deliver; they do not trust them to be open and honest? There is such a lack of trust in so many sectors of this government that people are leaking all over the place, and there is good reason for it. You always know that a government is not performing well when its public servants start speaking out, when stakeholders no longer trust it and they start turning to the opposition and giving the information.
You have to ask the question, too, as to why they are not bothering to give this information to the Greens. What we heard again from Amanda Bresnan was her frustration at just how sidelined she and the Greens have been in this debate. The Greens have the balance of power here. You would think that they would be in a great position for people to be coming to them to take up issues. The problem is that they do not trust them to actually do anything other than cosy up to this government. And this cosy Labor-Greens alliance, this cosy clique we have now in the ACT between the Labor Party and the Greens, this effective majority government, means that people can have no confidence.
We heard Amanda Bresnan on the radio this week where it appeared that she was the only one who did not know what was going on. She was the only one that did not have the information. Her main gripe—and we heard it again during this speech—was that she did not actually get the information.
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