Page 1668 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 1 May 2012
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The second question goes to the fact that Mr Hanson had this email for several weeks, according to his media interview. On the radio that morning he said he had this information for a while and that he was waiting for the sitting week to come up to address it. This raises an interesting question: why wait till the sitting week? If this was such a serious issue, and at that point we were—Mr Hanson, you might correct me here—10 or 12 days before the sitting week, a couple of weeks or something like that, why did Mr Hanson not immediately go to the Chief Minister and say: “Minister for Health, I’ve had this serious accusation raised with me. We need to get to the bottom of it. Here’s the information. I suggest there needs to be something done here”?
That could have been the approach. If he had wanted to get to the bottom of it, we could have been about getting it fixed. What Mr Hanson wanted in this case was to maximise the political embarrassment. He did not actually want to get to the bottom of it. He could have written to the Chief Minister. He could have called her up. I am sure the Chief Minister would have taken his call.
It brings us back to the issue of holding the government to account. Is it about holding the government to account or is it about getting Mr Hanson a headline? Perhaps it is the Alistair Coe approach: “I’ve got this information.” This is what we recall Mr Coe did in the last couple of months. He was so shocked, so offended, so appalled by the note that Mr Hargreaves had sent him across the chamber that he sat on it for 18 months until a politically expedient moment and then suddenly dropped it into the media. It is just absolutely the definition of confected outrage.
This raises interesting questions about how the Liberal party room conducts itself and how the Liberal party room is led. What is the reaction of the Liberal Party when something like this happens? Is this how it goes in the Liberal party room? What is the reaction when Mr Hanson comes in and has done his interview in the morning in which he says: “Oh, I’ve got this email. I’m going to sit on it until the sitting week”? Is there a bit of awkward silence and embarrassment and they go, “Whoops, we really should have taken a more constructive approach to that,” or is it the atmosphere of a university drinking competition where they are urging each other on and winding each other up to go a little bit harder at each other?
I think this raises questions about the integrity of this motion and the way we hold the government to account in this place. Do we actually want to get outcomes? Do we want to hold the government to account? Or is it about getting a political headline? I can assure you the Greens are more interested in getting the outcomes. That is why Ms Bresnan has moved an amendment to ensure that the Auditor-General gets involved. We believe we need to get to the bottom of this, but we believe it should be done in a constructive way, just as on previous occasions when issues came up about childcare and protection and Ms Hunter sought to look for the most effective way to investigate the matters at hand—not the most politically spectacular way but the most effective way. That is why Ms Bresnan has moved the amendment she has. I commend Ms Bresnan’s amendment to the Assembly.
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