Page 5601 - Week 13 - Thursday, 17 November 2011
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discourtesy or disrespect was intended and if any was taken I unreservedly apologised. In that letter, I was careful to acknowledge the powers and capacity of the PAC to veto the Government’s proposed candidate.
But read on. It is not until you get to paragraph 46 that the submission says:
The third matter referred to was a stated approach by myself to the Chair of PAC. As I indicated earlier I spoke to the Chair to reassure her and the PAC that no disrespect was intended by the press release. I assume this is the ‘approach’ referred to by Mr Smyth. Clearly the personal courtesy to clarify the intent of my action with the Chair was not an attempt to influence the Committee. If anything it was a means of emphasising my concerns that the press release was misconstrued.
There was not a single mention of the fact that she told the chair of the committee inquiring into the appointment that her nominee would be the Auditor-General.
Why is that omitted from this statement? It is an interestingly constructed statement. There are 60-odd pages worth of material. There are 69 paragraphs that I suspect were written by a lawyer and legalled by somebody. What is glaring are the omissions from this statement. Why didn’t you tell the full story? The Chief Minister refused to answer the question properly in question time. I think it is a shame.
Let us go to motive here. Why would Ms Le Couteur invent such a conversation? What is in it for Ms Le Couteur to say that the Chief Minister told her that Dr Cooper would be the new Auditor-General? What possible purpose would the chair of PAC have? Ms Le Couteur has been abandoned by the committee, left to hang out to dry by Mr Corbell and her Greens colleague Ms Bresnan—disregarded. There was the statement: “We do not take what you say as factual. We believe the Chief Minister over you.” What is in it for Ms Le Couteur?
Ms Le Couteur has acted honourably in this entire process, and she has been a good chair of the public accounts committee. When approached by Dr Cooper on the night of the Monday, she went back to her office, I think at 9.41 at night, and said, “Members, you need to be aware …” And she detailed what happened. She was aware of the implications of somebody speaking to the chair of the committee that would decide their future. She was aware of those implications, and she did the right thing by informing Mr Hargreaves and me—and the secretary of the committee, I think, as well—that she had had this meeting. After she had spoken to the Chief Minister, she came and told us at the next meeting that she had had a conversation with the Chief Minister where the Chief Minister had told her these things.
We never made that public. We continued on with our process. But it is interesting that it is omitted in the very carefully worded submission that the Chief Minister made to the privileges committee. It is very curious. And it hangs. It will still hang there. It is now the elephant in the room as to whom we believe. Do we believe the Chief Minister, who would like us to believe that this conversation never took place? “All I did was go down and say, ‘Sorry; my press release got misconstrued.’” No mention of the fact that she went down there, laid down the law and said, “Well, there you will be; she will be the new Auditor-General.” All the Chief Minister says in her address
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