Page 7 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 14 February 2012
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evidence.” This is what we see as the result a couple of days later: instead of Katy Gallagher continuing to throw the mud, we have John Hargreaves. But we see how they are ramping it down as they see that they do not have the case that they claim to have.
The claims that the Chief Minister made on Friday were wrong. She made all sorts of unsubstantiated allegations in her press release; they were wrong. She will have to justify why she is happy to go out and smear without any evidence—smearing individual staff and smearing members. If that is the Chief Minister’s way of doing things, we can only suspect that the reason it is Mr Hargreaves now moving the motion is that someone has advised the Chief Minister that perhaps she was on pretty shaky ground in making the claims that she made on Friday.
It is first important to address the issues. I have done so publicly; I will do it again. The issues in relation to time sheets and the submission of time sheets are unfortunate. I have acknowledged that that was not handled well by my office, and I take responsibility for that. The question then becomes this: given that we have been through a process with corporate services in resolving those issues, in going through the issues around time sheets, the issue becomes one of what to do from here. As I understand it, those issues have been resolved.
What we are talking about—we see it from the government’s rhetoric, from the government’s change in rhetoric—is the submission of time sheets. All the allegations made by Ms Gallagher are completely unsubstantiated. There has been an acknowledgement by me and my office that time sheets were not submitted in a timely manner. That is something I regret.
Mr Barr interjecting—
MR SESELJA: But in terms of getting—I will just make the point, as we get the interjection from Mr Barr, that I am sure that this is an issue that is not isolated to one office in the Assembly. I would expect that ministers will get up and declare that at no stage have there been any issues around time sheets in their offices: if their claim is that time sheets are such a grave concern, I am sure that all members will get up and say there have been no issues. Perhaps Ms Gallagher can declare exactly whether there have ever been issues around late time sheets.
The issues that were first put forward by Ms Gallagher have been backed away from—backed away from because they had no evidence. They are now looking at a different way of smearing. They are sending Mr Hargreaves out. We will deal with the actual motion that is before us, not with a lot of the allegations that they seem to have run away from.
The central claim in this motion appears to be in relation to the president of the Liberal Party. I will simply make this point: presidents of political parties work in the Assembly across the political spectrum. We have seen that on the Labor side; we have seen that on the Liberal side. To suggest that that is inappropriate—I reject that. To suggest that someone cannot be volunteering for a political party and working for a political party in the Assembly is incorrect. It is not the way that the Labor Party has
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