Page 2579 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 5 June 2012
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and the Greens’ point of view it is an “anything goes” approach. Ms Hunter says it has not met the Greens’ test. When kids are taken into a house with no electricity, no heating, no hot water, no bedding, broken windows, in the middle of winter, when that is done on this minister’s watch, that does not meet the Greens’ test.
What is the Greens’ test when it comes to ministerial responsibility? It seems that it is anything goes for the Labor Party. On such a serious issue you would think the Greens would be able to put aside their loyalty to the alliance and actually do what is right and for once show the community that they will stand up for something they believe in, regardless of whether that causes tension between them and their alliance partners. That would actually see the Greens grow in the estimation of many in the community. If they could see that they will, from time to time, stand up for what is right in this place, do the right thing, that would be good policy and it would be good politics because the community would have some respect for them. As it is today, they have just confirmed that no standard is too low when it comes to the Labor Party. No minister will ever be held to account by the Greens in this place.
But the Chief Minister does not get away with it either. She is the Chief Minister who appointed this minister. She is the minister who keeps her in that job. She should be taking a good, hard look at herself and asking herself the question: is this minister doing a good job? I do not think we actually heard her say that. I think probably in her heart of hearts she knows that Joy Burch is not doing a good job, but she cannot bring herself to withdraw her support. She is not strong enough to actually show leadership and say: “I will take over. I will ensure that these things are fixed, because this minister has shown that she is not up to it.” That would not be a political thing to do; that would be leadership. That would be the right thing to do. The community may well judge her very favourably were she to do that.
As it is, she stands condemned, as this minister stands condemned, because she does nothing about it. She does nothing to hold her accountable. This Assembly should hold her accountable. It would send a very clear message to ministers that you cannot just let things linger, you cannot just let bad things that happen in your department go unchecked. This motion should be supported. We should send the clearest possible message that care and protection should be looked after better than this. (Time expired.)
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (11.20): The Canberra Liberals will not be supporting the amendment. The amendment is a sell-out of the vulnerable children of the ACT by the ACT Greens here today. The leader of the Greens said: “We can’t have a vote of no confidence today because it doesn’t meet the test. It doesn’t meet the test of”—I think the words the leader used were—“grossly negligent”. Well, what could be more grossly negligent than some of the findings of this report when put in the context that we knew that this was a problem eight years ago? The Vardon report told us that this was a problem eight years ago.
Just as an aside, I think that it is rich that we have a new doctrine of ministerial accountability to be levelled against the ACT Liberals. I was not a senior adviser; I was an adviser to the Attorney-General. That was my job. But somehow I am
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