Page 3084 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 14 August 2012
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They are not even members of the committee, yet the generosity of the chair saw them asking 60 per cent of the questions.
I am a member of that committee, and the deputy chair of it. You would reckon I would have a fair shake, wouldn’t you? But it might be a bit too much to ask because I reckon as a member of the committee I should have been entitled to about 20 per cent of the questions. I did not come close. Sixty per cent of them were asked by two members who were two members visiting. And what did they do with that privilege? They abused the privilege.
The other thing that I remark upon about this particular process is the insistence by those opposite on having their questions on notice answered before we can actually get them and debate the whole lot. These people are the same people who put 1,000 questions on notice, with multiple sections in their questions. It is impossible to comply with that, and they know it. If you have a look at the last few estimates reports you will see a growing number of these questions on notice.
What do they do with the information, Madam Deputy Speaker? I can tell you: diddly-squat. They do diddly-squat with it. Do you know what I think it is? I think it is self-imposed information overload. That is what I reckon it is. And you have to feel sorry for the people that work in their offices because they get all of this overload. It is just asking questions for its own sake. I do not even see them writing to people and saying: “Guess what I asked in the estimates committee? I asked this, I asked that, I asked something else.” We do not see any of that. All I see is them asking questions for their own sake. I guess it is to see their name in print.
Mr Coe: What are you doing now, John?
MR HARGREAVES: What am I doing now, Mr Coe asks rhetorically. I tell you—
MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: We are not having a conversation across the chamber.
MR HARGREAVES: Madam Deputy Speaker, through you, I would like to respond to Mr Coe’s interjection.
Mr Coe interjecting—
MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Coe.
MR HARGREAVES: Mr Coe, suffering desperately from the impetuosity of youth, cannot help himself. He has got to throw something in the middle. He has got to throw in there a hand grenade or a firecracker. Well, it is not a firecracker. It is not even a tom thumb. It does not even excite anybody; it is just a complete and utter waste of time.
With respect to what I also observed in this pattern of behaviour of bullying, when we were in the deliberative phase Mr Smyth and Mr Coe were quite measured in their contributions and the recommendations that they came forward with. In fact we
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