Page 716 - Week 02 - Thursday, 23 February 2012
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mistake and taken the consequences of that. And I must say, after two weeks of the Liberal Party failing to actually deal with their own issues of very serious maladministration within their office, for them to come in here and lecture us morally on the rights of gay and lesbian people is very hard to stomach. It is very hard to stomach after we sat here and listened to all of you in many of the debates in this place on that matter.
The other thing that outrages me is that Mr Coe, supposedly deeply offended by this matter, took 18 months to tell everybody about it. God help us if Mr Coe was ever a minister in this place who was deeply offended or disturbed by something that was drawn to his attention, so deeply disturbed that he actually put it at the bottom of a pile of papers and let it sit there for 18 months. That gives us the measure of the man there too.
Let us get on with the business of the Assembly. Mr Hargreaves has paid the price. He has paid the price of a senior role within this Assembly. So this suggestion around the position of the Speaker being more important than the position of the whip in terms of its role in the Assembly is simply rubbish. Let us get on with the business of the day.
I notice how keen you are to talk about the Labor Party, but you were a little less keen on Tuesday to talk about yourselves. So let us get some standards into this place and accept where members have made mistakes on matters that need to be responded to.
Mrs Dunne: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker, I draw your attention to Ms Gallagher’s comment that on Tuesday we were not so keen to talk about a matter. I consider it a reflection on the vote, the majority vote of this Assembly. Could you encourage the Chief Minister not to make reflections upon votes of the Assembly?
MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: There is no point of order, Mrs Dunne.
MS GALLAGHER: So let us accept that a mistake was made and an opportunity has presented itself to the Liberal Party to play politics with it. Mr Hargreaves has responded appropriately. We have accepted that you need to take responsibility when you make mistakes, unlike the Leader of the Opposition, who can make a mistake for three years, involving serious matters, and has no response to that at all—none, no personal response at all to those matters. Let us move on and deal with the business of the day, because that is what the community expects of us.
MR HANSON (Molonglo) (11.02), in reply: I thank members for their contributions. What strikes me out of this debate is that when it is about the Liberal Party we will see quite partisan debate and we will see vicious political attacks and the case being litigated. We know that there has been a case about timesheets and we have seen Mr Hargreaves come to this place playing an enormously political role, leading the charge in political debate. We have seen Katy Gallagher in the Assembly and outside running a political crusade because of the timesheet issue. And we have seen the Greens rallying behind them in confected outrage as well. When it is an issue like that, you will see this immensely political attack come from the Labor Party. That is what we expect. Why would we not expect that? We are politicians.
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