Page 3086 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 14 August 2012
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: Resume your seat for a moment, Mr Hargreaves. Mrs Dunne, a point of order?
Mrs Dunne: Madam Deputy Speaker, this is a debate on the comments of the estimates committee. The estimates inquiry is fairly wide ranging but it does not include—
MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: Stop the clock, please.
Mrs Dunne: the motivations of Mr Coe, it does not include a discussion of Liberal Party policy or the motivations of members of the Legislative Assembly who may or may not have been in attendance at the committee. You have already asked him to be relevant once and I would ask you to ensure that Mr Hargreaves is relevant to comments on the estimates report.
MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you, Mrs Dunne. I do believe you have just returned to the estimates deliberations, so we can continue, Mr Hargreaves.
MR HARGREAVES: I have indeed, thank you very much. My comments are around this particular dissenting report. Mrs Dunne says, “You can’t go to the motives of those opposite.” When you open it up the first thing said is that the Labor government has to be condemned for this, that and the other. There is likely to be a little bit of motive behind that. There might be something in that. I suspect that there is.
I remember Gary Humphries once said that the estimates committee report was the worst report he had ever seen. I remember a former Treasurer, Ted Quinlan, saying about an estimates committee report that it was the worst one he had ever seen. But I have to say that in 15 years, Madam Deputy Speaker, this dissenting report is the worst one I have ever seen. This has to be one of the laziest exercises of a dissenting report I have ever seen in my life. You put forward a proposition, it gets knocked off, and it pops up in there. And look at the size of it. It is absolute garbage.
Madam Deputy Speaker, I suggest to you and to the community that they have a good look at what is in this estimates committee report. You will see that it is full of requests for the government to come back and tell them something. Just come back and tell them something; come back and tell them some more. In fact a lot of it says, “Come back and tell us before we actually debate the budget.” That is how ludicrous this is. The request is to come back and debate an item in the budget. “Come and give us the information before we debate it.” When we have to debate things cognately it is nonsensical in the extreme. And where did it come from? Did it come from Ms Hunter? No, it did not. Did it come from Ms Bresnan? No, it did not. Did it come from me? Absolutely not. I guess you can take your pick out of the other two guys.
I recommend that the government have a good read of this report. I recommend the CIE report to the government and to the community for a good read. And I recommend the dissenting report of the opposition to the community for a good laugh.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video