Page 3351 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 17 August 2011
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do? What does Andrew Barr do? He sells him down the river. He actually gives the Chief Minister the draft so that the Chief Minister can redraft the letter.
It makes a mockery not just of the independence of the planning process but of this guy as a minister. He was so weak that he could not stand up to the Chief Minister. And when his chief planner asked him to, he actually sought the permission of the Chief Minister to criticise him. He sought Jon Stanhope’s permission. So Neil Savery gets sold down the river. Andrew Barr goes running off to Jon Stanhope, and then we see Neil Savery moved aside. He gets moved aside because he dared to speak out against government interference in the planning process.
On that issue, I believe that there is much more to come out and much more to be said about the treatment of Neil Savery and about the ongoing interference in the statutory planning process, the inappropriate interference of this government in a statutory planning process. A former minister was constantly misleading the community by on the one hand saying that he wanted to keep the politics out of planning while his chief planner was telling him that politics had well and truly been put back into planning.
I will just touch on the Bimberi issue; Mrs Dunne will touch on that in some more detail. At Bimberi we have again seen the dodgiest of processes when it comes to the establishment of this inquiry and the alleged interference in that inquiry. We have got whistleblower after whistleblower saying that they were coached. They were coached and steered away from the inquiry. And to the extent that they were speaking to the inquiry, they were coached. They were directed as to how they should give evidence. It makes an absolute mockery of that process. We know that it was therefore impossible for the commissioners to get to the bottom of issues at Bimberi because we know that there was coaching of witnesses going on. We know that there was an attempt to pervert that process.
We now have this long-established pattern from the Labor Party in this place, from the ACT Labor government: they treat anyone who speaks out against them with contempt; they engage in retribution towards them. They get sacked; they get moved aside.
Ms Gallagher herself engaged in this when she publicly attacked the doctors who dared speak out about bullying at Canberra Hospital. She as health minister set the tone as to how they should be treated. She set the tone, and some of her officials, unfortunately, are now following her lead and going after those who dare to speak out against this government.
This motion should be supported. It highlights just how rotten this government are. It highlights how they treat people who disagree with them. Canberrans who expect that their government would have some sense of decency, that they would treat whistleblowers with some sense of decency, would be disappointed by these examples. I commend the motion to the Assembly. It is an extraordinarily important motion.
MS GALLAGHER (Molonglo—Chief Minister, Minister for Health and Minister for Industrial Relations) (12.03): The government will oppose the motion from Mr Seselja. I think the Liberals have drafted this motion in a particular way so that the
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