Page 159 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 15 February 2012
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heckling—and ignored it. But when we were doing something similar—I accept that we were—you gave us a bit of a school ma’am speech. Now you are ignoring me. All right, I will get on with explaining why we will not be supporting Ms Gallagher’s amendment as amended. Ms Gallagher thinks we are trying to form some sort of conspiracy against her here.
MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: Excuse me, Mr Hanson. I am advised that, because you spoke to Ms Bresnan’s amendments to Ms Gallagher’s amendment, you are deemed to have spoken to Ms Gallagher’s amendment as well. This is taken from the House of Representatives Practice, so you actually have spoken to this amendment and you cannot continue to speak now.
MR HANSON: So your advice is that if it is an amendment to an amendment you cannot then speak to the motion?
MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: That is right, because you have already spoken. I am sorry, Mr Hanson, you can no longer speak to that. Do you wish to close the debate now?
MR HANSON: If you are happy to restart the clocks then I will.
MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is that Ms Gallagher’s amendment as amended be agreed to.
MR HANSON: In closing, the reality is that it would appear we are going to pass a motion that largely excuses Ms Gallagher for breaking an election promise, for going out to the media and creating the impression that she was doing something somewhat different from what she did. The fact that the Greens are not supporting parts of her motion probably acknowledges there is a funding gap of $8.9 million in her budget policy.
Although Katy Gallagher is saying, “Oh, it’s in the funding; I’ve got this in the funding envelope,” we have not seen a single mention or announcement from this government that they were going to take over funding of the walk-in centre at the Canberra Hospital. You would have thought that, if that was their plan, at some stage they would have announced that. You would have thought that when Katy Gallagher announced that she was incorporating that money into her election policy—which is the reality of what she has done because she said it is only $10 million moving forward and it would require the additional $10 million to run the second centre—she might have mentioned it then.
There are a couple of explanations. Perhaps she forgot entirely about the fact that this was funded by the commonwealth and had not remembered that someone needs to pick up the gap in the funding from 2013-14 and the full amount onwards. That is one explanation. What are other explanations? I am struggling to find another explanation. Perhaps she had done it and perhaps she was just not briefed on what was going on. Perhaps that was the plan in the Health Directorate and they had forgotten to tell the minister. Or perhaps the minister is not across her brief. That might be another explanation, and that would not be of particular surprise. I think we have seen that
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