Page 461 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 21 February 2012
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Mr Hargreaves: Mr Speaker, you did ask that relevance be the go.
MR SESELJA: Could we stop the clock, Mr Speaker?
Mr Hargreaves: This suspension of standing orders debate is not about the government’s record. It is about reasons why it should or should not take place.
MR SPEAKER: At this point there is no point of order. Mr Seselja is going to the motivation of why this matter has been brought forward.
MR SESELJA: So we see the Labor Party continuing to want to make grubby claims rather than actually talking about the issues that are of concern to Canberra families. They do not want to talk about those things. That is why Ms Gallagher wants turn after turn after turn to re-litigate her case that she failed to make last time, to re-litigate unsubstantiated, cowardly allegations that are made under parliamentary privilege. That is what the Labor Party will be seen to be doing in this case. That is what they are now seeking to do again and they are undermining the very process that they claim to support and that they, along with the Greens, have supported in this place. They have put in place the process and just today they are undermining that very process which has been put in place.
MS BRESNAN (Brindabella) (10.11): The Greens will not be supporting the suspension of standing orders. This is actually not the place to be making this statement. There will be plenty of opportunities to address the matters at hand. The Greens are actually keen to get on with the business of the day—in fact, business we did not get to last week. So we are keen to get on with it. There will be other opportunities to make these statements.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (10.11): This is another tawdry attack by the Labor Party on the Liberal Party. The Chief Minister is attempting to attack the Liberal Party today through seeking to speak on this matter again because they have nothing else. They have an appalling record which they are trying to detract from.
Let us look at all the things that this Chief Minister has not wanted investigated but from time to time has been forced to. There was the 10-year war on obstetrics where she said that there was nothing going on but she was eventually forced into an investigation. She got the investigation she wanted last week by supporting the motion moved by Mr Hargreaves, but it is not working out the way she wanted, so she wants to undermine that process. She wants to derail it, to perhaps get in the ear of whoever the auditor might be to make sure that her message gets across. That is not how this place works. There is a process in place. Now that there is a process in place it is up to the auditor, the reviewer, to do their job without the political interference of the Labor Party.
What this is about today is political interference. If the Chief Minister wants to talk to the auditor, she is entitled to do that. There will be a process whereby that is done, whereby people will have an opportunity to look at draft reports, I presume, and comment on them if they are adversely commented upon. These are the processes that
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