Page 318 - Week 01 - Thursday, 16 February 2012
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then or he is not telling the truth now. And we know the answer: he was not telling the truth then, nor was Katy Gallagher.
As for the analysis, it was the shoddiest piece of work we have seen from this government, and that is saying something. It was a shoddy piece of work, which is a very poor reflection on these ministers and everyone who cooperated with that process. Many of those would have been co-opted to cooperate with the process, but, regardless—and this is why we need to get to the bottom of it—millions of dollars have been wasted and the government have wasted them while perpetuating a lie, while they have been putting untruths out there into the community, deliberately misleading the community time and time again. They have claimed millions of dollars in savings which are completely fictitious. If they believed that they were true they would now go ahead with this project.
That is why we need to get to the bottom of this, because the community should not be misled in this way on major infrastructure projects. We should be able to trust the numbers that the government give us and they should not waste millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money while telling us porkies. That is not a good way to govern and that is why we need an inquiry to get to the bottom of this shoddy business.
MR HARGREAVES (Brindabella) (12.10): The government will not be supporting this motion, this referral. I would like to very briefly indicate why that is so. By way of some background, however, let me say that I know that those opposite were basing the great bulk of their election campaign going into this election year on the project of a government office building. When the government took the policy decision to not proceed with it, most of the bases of their election campaign went out the window. So I am not surprised to see them flapping around like carp out of the lake.
The principal reason why we are not going to support the motion is this. The process, we believe, for referrals to the public accounts committee particularly, and other standing committees, is that, particularly where it is within the shadow portfolio of a member of that committee, that member would bring such an issue to the standing committee and the committee would then decide whether it wished to pick it up as a self-referral, having regard to its own workload, which I indicate to the chamber is extensive this year.
For my own part, as a member of four substantive and two subordinate committees, my workload is incredibly high with regard to committee work. And I am not sure that there will be anything to come out of this. I would have preferred to have discussed it in the committee and come to a position. If it was the view of the committee not to proceed with it, then the opportunity to bring it to the chamber would have been available to members. On the other hand, it is the other way around. I find that to be an insult to the committee—to the committee chair and to me as the deputy chair. It is just putting political opportunism ahead of the amount of real work that the committee actually does. We have enough real work to do, to talk to the community about, without having to indulge in blatant political grandstanding.
The government will not be supporting this motion.
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