Page 4510 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 18 October 2011
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minister who has failed. She has failed to look after the most vulnerable in our community. We are seeing a dislink between the rhetoric from the minister and the Labor Party about looking after the most vulnerable in our community and the reality. The reality is exposed in this report, which shows that this is a government that is not looking after the most vulnerable in our community.
Despite the fact that the minister, the government and the Chief Minister have decided to attack Mrs Dunne, let us be very clear—we are only aware of these issues because of Mrs Dunne. If it were not for the work she has done with members of the community to expose the failings of this minister, we would not be aware of these problems. It is quite clear that the report produced by Anita Phillips was only prompted by Mrs Dunne, which left the minister without any other solution to the gross failings that had been exposed.
She will be found guilty today. As Mrs Dunne, Mr Smyth, Mr Seselja and, indeed, Ms Hunter pointed out, she knew the law was being breached by her department and she allowed that to continue. As Mr Smyth pointed out, that quite clearly is in breach of the ministerial code of conduct. This was not an oversight; she wilfully allowed the law to be broken repeatedly. Indeed, I will quote from Meredith Hunter in her speech—“it does not excuse her”, “she is accountable”, “for more than a year the law has been broken”, and “significant failure in the Community Services Directorate”. So we are not in disagreement that there has been gross negligence, that the law has been breached and that the minister has supported the law being breached, in complete disregard of the ministerial code of conduct.
It begs the question: under what circumstances will the Greens actually acknowledge that a minister has failed and support a vote of no confidence? As Mr Smyth pointed out, the Greens supported a censure motion because of a press release he put out about a committee. So they see this as equivalent in its severity. They think that breaching the law and allowing the department to continue breaching the law—the failures that we have seen through the review from Anita Phillips—is somehow equivalent to some press release about a committee, and it quite clearly is not. What we are seeing from the Greens today is a failure to stand up and act independently of their coalition partners. Their own parliamentary agreement makes it clear that that is what they should be doing. They will not support the government under certain circumstances—I will talk about where they will maintain confidence and where they will not—of proven corruption or gross negligence.
The minister has allowed her department to wilfully break the law, which has consequences for the most vulnerable in our community. This has been ongoing for a year. In fact, it makes you wonder how long this has been ongoing since the Vardon report. Under what circumstances will the Greens acknowledge that that is a crime and wilful negligence that is worthy of a vote of no confidence? Until the Greens actually stand up to this government and say, “No, enough is enough; we do not accept that,” they are going to lose support in the community. I think we are already seeing that the Greens are no longer being seen as a thoroughly independent third party. They are not third-party insurance; they are not providing the accountability that is required in this place.
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