Page 3400 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 17 August 2011
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afternoon. I will stop there. I know that my colleague Ms Bresnan will be speaking on part of Mr Hanson’s amendment.
MR SESELJA (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (4.11): Rarely have so many words been used by one person to say so little as we just heard from Ms Hunter. She could have summed it up very easily by saying, “I’m going to sell these people out.” That is exactly what she does and she does it so often. She always tries to use some words to justify why she is selling people out. We know why she is selling them out. It is because she wants to protect the government. It is all well and good to say: “We should never focus on the specific. We should always focus on the broad, because if we do not focus on the specific then people will not see just how crook this government is. They will not see just how rotten this government is.”
These individual cases go to that. Ms Hunter, instead of seeking justice for these people, sells them out and says: “We need to have a broad conversation. Let’s not focus on their issues. Let’s not focus on the way that Ms Scattergood has been treated. Let’s not try and get to the bottom of that and get her some justice and get her some compensation.” Ms Hunter sells her out. That is what she does. We see it time and time again. She sold the people of Flynn out. She sold the workers in Bimberi out. We see it over and over again. Today’s excuse is, “Well, you can’t focus on individuals.” Sometimes you have to focus on individuals, because the way these various individuals are treated indicates a systemic culture. You cannot just focus on the broad without focusing on those individuals who are damaged by that culture and are damaged by the actions of this government.
Ms Hunter, in seeking to justify that sell-out, does not understand what we are talking about in relation to Ms Scattergood. The very point in relation to the Public Interest Disclosure Act is that it was deemed not to apply in this case. I am not sure if she missed that part. It was deemed not to apply, which is why those people who retaliated against her could not be charged under the provisions of that act. So if you do not understand what we are debating then you would be better off not getting up at all. It did not apply in this case, and that is the point. This government uses it to defend—
Ms Gallagher: It did apply.
MR SESELJA: If it applied then people would have been subject to prosecution. They would have been subject to prosecution in response. That is the problem we have. The government hides behind it. It hides behind it when there should be a broad-ranging inquiry in Health, and when there is a genuine whistleblower she is told that it does not apply. No-one could be fined, no-one could be taken to task for the retaliations, so it did not apply. How could it apply if they could not be taken to task?
That is the problem we face. Ms Hunter is again selling these people out in saying, “Well, we can’t focus on these individuals. We can’t focus on them.” Why not? Why shouldn’t we be standing up for the individuals who showed some of the most egregious cases of this government engaging in retribution towards individuals? That is what has happened in so many of these cases. It is retribution against individuals. There is now a culture of it, developed from the top, from the ministers. The ministers have set this tone. The Chief Minister herself, as health minister, set that tone in her
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