Page 16 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 14 February 2012
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Mr Seselja. The point is this: is that appropriate or is it not appropriate? What I am pointing out is that there are many incidences in this Assembly where we have not only party members working in offices but spouses and other family members working across the Assembly and also the ACT government.
MR SPEAKER: Thank you, Mr Hanson. On the point of order, there is no point of order at this point, although I would ask you, Mr Hanson, in respect of drifting into the realm of families, to consider that it might be best if we keep the families out of this debate and focus on the staffers, which I think is the tenor of the debate.
MR HANSON: Let me address that point of order, because—
MR SPEAKER: Are we going to start the time again, Mr Hanson? Do you want to continue with this?
MR HANSON: On the point of order, Mr Speaker—
MR SPEAKER: No, we are not. We are just going to start the clock again. It was not a direction; it was an invitation to just consider what realms, what boundaries, we want to put on this debate. Let us start the clock again.
MR HANSON: Mr Hargreaves is reported in the Canberra Times as saying, “We will ask for an examination of Mr Doyle’s employment in light of clause 8 of the Assembly members’ code of conduct.” So the Labor Party, as we heard on 666 this morning, were going after family members. That is exactly what they were trying to do. We heard Ms Hunter say on behalf of the Greens that she had seen a draft of that and she is unhappy with it. This is exactly what you will see from the Labor Party here—a direct attack wherever they can on the Liberal Party.
Let us not pretend that Katy Gallagher was not going directly after family members. That is exactly what she was doing. Now Mr Hargreaves is trying to get on some high moral horse about it. He is the one that put in the motion that he wanted to attack the Liberal Party because they have a family member. But when it comes to raising questions about a similar incidence in the Labor Party, where they have spouses working in the Assembly, where they have spouses working in the ACT government, we are told: “No, you cannot mention that. That would be immoral. That would be unethical.”
We have complete hypocrisy, Mr Speaker, between what is being put forward as acceptable standards for the Labor Party and what is somehow immoral and unethical for the Liberal Party. Ms Hunter, with her confected outrage this morning, was asked on the radio by Ross Solly, “Can Ms Hunter put her hand on her heart and say that she and other Greens’ offices are shipshape?” No, she could not. She refused to answer that question. She revealed that there is documentation and matters outstanding and not always on time. She said that these are sort of administrative matters. It seems that it is acceptable that she has some tardiness in her office and across the Greens, but not in the Liberals. We are being kept to some different standard.
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