Page 26 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 14 February 2012
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MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Hanson, would you like to continue, please?
MR HANSON: I will. I just encourage members to support Mr Smyth’s amendments. What Mr Smyth’s amendments say essentially is that perhaps we are not all without blame here: if it applies to the Liberal Party, it would apply equally to the Labor Party and to the Greens. I would say to those members opposite: if you do not support this, what do you have to hide? The perception will be—Mr Hargreaves talked about perception, and that is the point—if you do not support Mr Smyth’s amendments, you have something to hide. That is the way that this will continue. So be very careful about the way you vote on this. You are damning yourselves to a perception that you are hiding something in all your offices if you do not support the amendments to the motion today.
MS HUNTER (Ginninderra—Parliamentary Leader, ACT Greens) (11.27): The Greens will not be supporting Mr Smyth’s amendments. I will explain why we are not supporting Mr Smyth’s amendments today. It has been very clear through all of this that there is not a systemic issue in this Assembly with regard to this matter. Mr Hargreaves has spoken about the annual report hearings. I remember that I was in attendance as well. Mr Hargreaves had found in the annual report a sentence which spoke about chasing a member up around attendance records and that it had been an ongoing issue.
Let us be very clear about this. There is a system in place here where if you have a member of staff who may have missed a few weeks of time sheets, you will get a note. You will get an email just to alert you to that and you can chase it up. What happened in the case of the Leader of the Opposition’s office was that this was not just an email over a few weeks of time sheets that had not been lodged. This was repeated requests over three years for time sheets to be submitted. It was about, I understand, more than one staff member. Quite a bit of this also relates to one in particular where we are not talking about a fortnight, we are not talking about a month; we are talking about numerous months. It appears that we could be talking about 14 months in one go. That is extraordinary.
This is not a systemic problem. Let us be very clear: this is a tactic to try and throw up a smokescreen. I can see the Liberal Party press release now. I could put in Hansard what the Liberal Party press release is going to say in a few minutes, and that is exactly what Mr Hanson has outlined to us. He has told us what their press release is going to say—that is, that this is about everyone. I am sorry, it is not about everyone. No other office was mentioned in the annual report of the Secretariat. Why was no other office mentioned in the annual report? Because they had not had repeated requests for a member to comply with very simple rules in this place. It is not difficult.
Mr Doszpot interjecting—
MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Doszpot!
MS HUNTER: As an employer, we have responsibilities. We sign a contract—
Opposition members interjecting—
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