Page 2508 - Week 06 - Thursday, 23 June 2011
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rights commissioner does not have a good thing to say for it. The Chief Justice does not have a good thing to say for it. I have spoken with the DPP and, although he is a guarded man and I know that he made three different suggestions to the government, I think I am of the view that this is probably not his preferred approach either.
It has left me scratching my head. This is bad law, absolutely and utterly bad law, and I wonder why we are doing it. I wonder why Mr Rattenbury went out of his way, without consulting one member of the legal fraternity, without returning the calls of the Law Society, to shake hands with Mr Corbell over this and agree to support it.
I think it goes like this: I think it goes back to May this year. In May this year, we know that Mr Rattenbury and Senator Brown had a dinner in the back room at La Scala and we know that they discussed at great length how Mr Rattenbury might become a minister. We know that Mr Rattenbury made it quite clear to Senator Brown that he thought this was a two-stage process, that he would stand down as Speaker and then he would make his run to be a minister in a Labor-Green government. His only concern was, according to my interlocutor, that he was a bit concerned that it might look like he was a bit greedy and that he was trampling over the aspirations of Ms Hunter. But Dr Brown said, “Don’t worry, Shane. Go for it.” “Don’t worry about it, Shane. Go for it.”
Mr Corbell: A point of order on relevance, Mr Assistant Speaker. I am sure that the Liberal Party enjoy the salacious story telling that they like to regale us with in this place, but it has nothing to do with the substance of this very important reform and I would ask you to direct Mrs Dunne to remain relevant.
MR ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Mr Hargreaves): Thank you very much, Mr Corbell. Mrs Dunne, I uphold Mr Corbell’s point of order. I do not think it is relevant to this debate whether Mr Rattenbury had a meal with anybody else at any particular restaurant, even though I was looking forward to the menu. As it turns out, I am not getting that, and I would ask you—
MRS DUNNE: Actually I do not know what the menu was, but I am sure my interlocutor could tell you, Mr Hargreaves.
MR ASSISTANT SPEAKER: please to keep us all in suspense about that and come back to the question at hand.
MRS DUNNE: It is actually very important, because this is bad legislation.
MR ASSISTANT SPEAKER: Is this on the point of order, Mrs Dunne?
MRS DUNNE: This is bad legislation. I am telling you why it is relevant, while I was speaking to the bill. This is bad legislation. When I sat down with Mr Rattenbury yesterday to talk about my amendments, it was interesting because you could see that he agreed with much of what I said about how the approach being proposed by the Canberra Liberals was a better one, but you also knew that he had already shaken hands on a dud deal. He had shaken hands on a dud piece of legislation because he
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