Page 704 - Week 02 - Thursday, 23 February 2012
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the offence in this place of making sexist slurs against Mrs Dunne, of making ageist slurs against a community council and ridiculing Mr Barr based on his sexuality. People have seen the note that was passed. For the life of me, I cannot imagine why a member of the Labor Party would write a note clearly ridiculing one of his fellow members based on sexuality and then pass that to a member of the Liberal Party. That is odd behaviour.
I think it comes down to the fact that there is a dysfunctional relationship in parts of the ACT Labor Party, just as there is in the federal Labor Party. You see the personal animosities, you see the friction that have been there between Mr Barr and Mr Hargreaves. We have seen that over time. We know they have had a big falling out. What we are seeing now is that Mr Hargreaves, again, is coming into this place full of bile, full of anger, and his response is to pass to the opposition a note ridiculing Mr Barr. That is not the sort of behaviour that is expected in this place.
For the life of me, I cannot imagine how Andrew Barr or any of his Labor colleagues could endorse Mr Hargreaves sniping in such a fashion. This is not the only incident where Mr Hargreaves has come to the opposition and sniped and ridiculed and run down his colleagues. He has had a go at Katy Gallagher and he has had a go at Andrew Barr behind their backs on other occasions, ridiculing them. He sits there and shakes his head trying to deny it, but we have it in black and white.
Often it is off the record—it is jibes, it is smear—but what you see here is documentary evidence that he has been doing this. It is in black and white, doing it in the Assembly and passing it to Mr Coe. That is how reckless he is. That is how much he is prepared to damage his own colleagues, regardless of the consequence to him personally. We have seen the consequence of that—he has had to resign as whip, he has had to apologise to the Tuggeranong Community Council, he has had to apologise to Mrs Dunne, he has had to apologise to Ms Bresnan and he has been stripped of his ministry on a couple of occasions for his behaviour, including going DUI as a minister. Is this the person the Labor Party says should be sitting in the chair presiding over the Assembly as Assistant Speaker?
The Chief Minister this morning on radio accepted that this latest incident was a lapse in judgement and was another embarrassment—another embarrassment and the latest poor judgement. Does she want John Hargreaves presiding over this place, someone that she accepts makes regular, poor judgments? When asked by Mr Solly on the radio, she accepted the point that it is not acceptable behaviour from a member of our parliament. Continuing on, she then said: “Well, I support him. He’s a good Labor man.”
So you can make sexist comments, you can go DUI, you can attack the community council, you can ridicule one of your colleagues based on their sexuality, and that makes you, in Ms Gallagher’s view, a good Labor man. Well, I would hate to see what a bad Labor man looks like. If that is her definition of a good Labor man then God help us, and God help the people of the ACT if she thinks that is acceptable. We now have the ridiculous situation where, because of Mr Hargreaves’s failings, the Chief Minister herself has had to take on the responsibilities of government whip.
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