Page 3083 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 14 August 2012
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prosecute and did not get up; so they stapled them together and that is the dissenting report. With respect to most of them, I had a bit of a giggle because every one of them started off the same way, “We recommend that the ACT Labor government be condemned” for this, that and the other. Well, that was going to get up! So no prizes for being bright and no prizes for being able to count. You would reckon, wouldn’t you, if you were dealing with an inquiry into a budget process that being able to count would be a good idea, but clearly that was not the case. But I have to say—
Mrs Dunne: That reinforces that the Greens are there to—
MR HARGREAVES: I hear Mrs Dunne muttering away in the background—mutter, mutter, mutter. Do feel free to continue to mutter, Mrs Dunne, because you entertain nobody but yourself.
I was, however, intrigued to see in the dissenting report the following passage on page 9 of volume 2, in the “Bullying” section:
Messrs Smyth and Coe emphasise that all people deserve the protection of the organisation in which they work …
They also say:
All forms of bullying are totally unacceptable. It is not acceptable in the workplace; it is not acceptable in the school yard …
Yet they sat by and they watched Mr Seselja and Mr Hanson hammer ministers and hammer the officials when they came to give evidence. They bullied them, they harassed them, they talked over them. They gave them no respite at all. Indeed such was the case that the chair sought to remind those members of standing orders 234 and 235.
For those people that do not know, 234 and 235 are where misbehaviour is dealt with by the chair or by another member of the committee. I have to say that I was very close to invoking my rights as a member under standing order 235 and requiring Mr Hanson to be removed from the hearings because his behaviour was, by a long shot, the worst behaviour that I have seen by a member here in a budget process in nearly 15 years of being in this place.
Occasionally Mrs Dunne gives him a run for his money because her behaviour is not only inconsistent but also it belittles those people who appear before her as a witness in these sorts of hearings. They only come down because it is not about the budget, it is not about the community, it is about them and about relevance deprivation that they experience, and we have to put up with it. Then, of course, the officials come along and give evidence, and what do they get? They get howled at. They get harassed.
Then, of course, you get the inconsistency of their approach. Mr Seselja and Mr Hanson went on this whinge-fest about how many questions they did not get a chance to ask. An analysis of it revealed that those two people, Madam Deputy Speaker, asked 60 per cent of the questions between them. Would you believe it?
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