Page 1522 - Week 04 - Thursday, 29 March 2012
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decide who is elected chair of the committee. I am sure that whoever is elected by the committee to be chair will have the full support of the committee behind them.
MR HARGREAVES (Brindabella) (11.34): The government will be supporting Ms Bresnan’s amendment because of two things. One is that we should not be prescriptive about saying a particular segment of the chamber should or should not be the chair. This is a repeat of the same conversation we had last year. This, in my view, is an attempt by the opposition to acquire the chair. I am surprised that they do not see the numbers themselves and know that they have not got a prayer. I do not know why he bothered.
I also think, and I need to put on the record again this year as I did last year, that it is an insult to all members to try to prescribe in the resolution who shall be the chair. Once people are elected to this place they can normally perform an unbiased service to a committee. However, we have seen in the past that that has not been possible for those opposite. They have sought to politicise every committee that I have been a member of when it comes to estimates and those sorts of things.
We are seeing it again being played out here by them trying to politicise the whole thing by saying, “We want to be the chair.” Madam Deputy Speaker, there will be five members of the estimates committee. There will be a government member, there will be two from the opposition and two from the crossbench. Blind Freddy can count on his fingers that three will beat two any day of the week. But I have to say that while three on two is a nice number, 11 on six is an even better number.
In principle, those people are wrong. They know they are wrong and that there is no way in the wide world this government or the crossbench will allow these folk to hijack this place yet again. We saw in the past that—was it last time? I am not sure; I think it might have been last time—they did not like the way things were going. They packed their bags and took off because they did not like the process.
Now they have come back this time and said: “We want to play again now. This time we want to be the captain of the team.” Guess what, Madam Deputy Speaker? That ain’t going to happen. That just plain ain’t going to happen.
Madam Deputy Speaker, I conclude with these two remarks: we wholeheartedly support Ms Bresnan’s amendment and I look forward to joining Mr Smyth on the estimates this year.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (11.37): It has consistently been the Canberra Liberals’ policy for as long as I have been in this chamber that we believe the opposition should chair the estimates committee. There has not been the same consistency from the government who, from time to time, have chopped and changed. They exercised between 2004 and 2008 the privilege of majority government, from time to time imposing a government chair on the estimates committee, and it was done by motion in this place.
So when Mr Hargreaves says that it is an insult to this chamber to have a motion that states the party from which the chair of the committee should come, he should
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