Page 5331 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 15 November 2011
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Mrs Dunne: And he spoke to you about it.
MS GALLAGHER: He did speak to me, but I have been waiting for an apology, which I believe should be public considering his misleading was very public and repeated a number of times. It is exactly what the opposition have questioned the Attorney-General over, and he corrected the record publicly when he inadvertently said something incorrect on the radio.
The other matter is about Mr Hanson. At times he is a little bit loose with his words, and he has raised a couple of points recently in the media. One was on ABC radio where he said:
It’s quite clear that it has been done for what appears to be political processes and motives rather than, you know, sort of covering up the embarrassment of the government rather than consistent with the act.
If Mr Hanson has any evidence to support that, I ask that he prove that that statement is correct. I think it is totally incorrect.
Mr Hanson also went on a local political panel and made an allegation which is incorrect when he said that the Chief Executive of ACT Health had to appear before a privileges committee of the Assembly because the department was covering up FOI documents. The terms of reference of the privileges committee clearly indicate that that is not what the chief executive was called before the committee to discuss. Mr Hanson should correct the record, because both those statements are misleading. They are not true. The standards we apply to ourselves on this side of the chamber are that, if we make a mistake, we come in and correct the record. In the interests of fairness, that is a standard that should apply to the opposition as well, and they are not applying it to themselves at the moment. I look forward to both of those statements being corrected as soon as possible.
Health—freedom of information requests
MR HANSON (Molonglo) (5.28): In response to the Chief Minister’s comments, my assertion on ABC radio 666 was not that the chief executive had been found by the privileges committee to have committed any offence; it was simply that the matter about which I had raised concerns—an FOI that had been redacted—had led to a number of events that led to the chief executive appearing before a privileges committee. If there has been any misunderstanding, I am quite happy to make it clear that that was not the intent of what I said.
My point is that the FOI should not have been redacted as it was. I have those concerns, but I acknowledge that the matter about which the chief executive appeared before a privileges committee arose from that situation but that it was not in actual fact in the terms of reference of the privileges committee. His appearance related to a letter that he wrote to me arising from that matter. So there is some sort of confusion, but I am very happy to clarify that matter here.
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