Page 20 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 14 February 2012

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us this morning that the matter had been cleared up. So why are we here? We are here because it suits the Labor Party and it suits the Greens to cast slurs and allegations on the Leader of the Opposition. Despite the Chief Minister’s denials on the radio this morning, this is an election year, and they see this as a hot button, so they are going to push it for as long and as hard as they can. But the reality does not match the rhetoric.

Mr Hargreaves says, “How can we believe anything the Leader of the Opposition”—the soon-to-be Chief Minister—“says because how would he know?” Mr Hargreaves has informed me and others that he is going to have a few trips overseas this year, so it will be official Assembly business to go to a CPA meeting. He will come back and sign off the time sheets of his staff, but how will he know? He will not even be in the country when some of those times are posted. We have all done overseas trips; we have all been on interstate trips where staff continue to fill out their time sheets.

Let us get to the heart of this; let us get to the nub of this. What is this about? This is about politics. But if you open the political door on one party then the political door is opened on all parties, and it should be opened. I am sure those opposite will not be afraid to widen the scope of this inquiry. If they are afraid to widen the scope of this inquiry then you have to ask why. As Mr Hanson has already said, Ms Hunter was asked, “Can you say that everything in your office is shipshape,” and she could not. Ms Hunter’s inability to answer questions about her own members’ administration of their offices has left them all open to the question: what is wrong in the offices of the Greens?

If you applied the same to those in government, we would ask: will all of the members of the government please stand up here and give us a guarantee, a hand-on-heart guarantee, that everything that has occurred in their offices in the last three and a bit years is above board and shipshape? You will not see a single one stand up and do that because they know they cannot. If they can, I will withdraw my amendments. If all seven members of the government and all members of the Greens get up and put their hands on their hearts and say to this Assembly, “Everything is 100 per cent shipshape in our offices and has been for the entirety of this Assembly and across all members of staff employed during that time,” I will withdraw my amendments. It is very simple. I will take you at your word. All of you stand up and say that. But none of you will because a simple inquiry of any public service office or any office anywhere in this country would probably find inconsistencies or errors, most of them human, because, at the end of the day, we are all human.

But I expect four Greens and seven Labor members to stand up and say they are above board, they are without sin. We can get a little bit biblical—they are casting the first stone. Well, just be careful who casts the first stone, because stones sometimes ricochet.

We know there are issues now. Somebody texted Ross Solly this morning, pointing out that the president of the Labor Party works in this building. He has worked in a number of offices, including that of the Chief Minister, and now in Dr Bourke’s. Is that inappropriate?


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