Page 1649 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 7 May 2013
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
MR SESELJA: I did not quite hear that one.
Ms Gallagher: Is that parting advice?
MR SESELJA: Parting advice?
MR ASSISTANT SPEAKER: Mr Seselja!
MR SESELJA: You will just have to wait and see whether it is parting advice.
MR ASSISTANT SPEAKER: Please address your comments through the chair, Mr Seselja.
MR SESELJA: Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I do sometimes feel the love from the Chief Minister. I do feel the love, and it is appreciated here. She is very keen to see me go, but I cannot quite figure out why.
Moving on to open and accountable government, I thought that, given this government’s and this Chief Minister’s stated commitment to open and accountable government, we would test it by looking at a few issues that the government have had to deal with and give them, I guess, a bit of a mark as to how they have dealt with it in terms of open and accountable government. They do have an open and accountable government. They have got Twitter cabinets, and they do have a website for FOI, so people can judge that how they like.
They can compare that, I suppose, with the running away from accountability on the management of ACTEW, the fact that they hid the fact of emergency data doctoring and the fact that they are now running away from debates on the upcoming budget, with the Treasurer not even up to taking on the opposition when it comes to debating and defending his budget. So they are three areas we will look at in terms of this government’s record on open and accountable government in the time that I have.
It is timely, given the events of last month, to illustrate how important open and accountable government is. The debate and the public discourse about the ACTEW salary scandal highlights how much the Canberra community want openness and transparency about where their taxes are being spent and the people that are allegedly acting as their representatives.
The lack of accountability in regard to ACTEW dates back many years. Since 2005 ACTEW had refused to publish their executives’ salaries, despite an Assembly committee demanding access to information in 2008. In 2010 it was revealed that the chief executive of ACTEW received $637,000 in annual salary. There was much public discussion about the appropriateness of this salary level, and this clearly illustrated that ACT taxpayers wanted to know how much people paid from their taxes and service charges were receiving. Interestingly, it was at this time, in 2010, that the then Acting Chief Minister, Katy Gallagher, in an ABC story, stated:
I’m confident that the board is acting in the best interests for Canberrans.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video