Page 2478 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 6 August 2013
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operandi, but we had hoped that his promotion to chair of the estimates committee might have encouraged him to improve. I am sorry to report, no such luck.
Thirdly, during the deliberative phase, Mr Hanson flouted conventions and failed to take the Clerk’s written advice on the standing orders, which is included with the minutes, preferring his own bizarre interpretation of the standing orders regarding consideration of the chair’s draft report.
Mr Smyth interjecting—
MADAM SPEAKER: Mr Smyth, be careful what you say.
DR BOURKE: An analogy of the extreme degree of contortion of the standing orders would be to look outside this morning and say it was night time. It would be, somewhere in the world.
In essence, Mr Hanson’s ruling as chair was that his draft report would be the final report. Instead of carefully considering each paragraph and recommendation for inclusion or exclusion, this chair took it upon himself to say, “All my stuff is in whether you want it or not.” Government members opposed this ruling during our deliberative meetings. During the deliberations, time and again, we put forward amendments to the chair’s draft. We sought to remove over 100 paragraphs and recommendations—to no avail, because each motion was negated on a 2-2 vote.
The preparation and consideration of the government members’ dissenting report, with 575 recommendations and 223 pages, includes our recommendations as well as the selected recommendations and paragraphs from the chair’s draft report which we agreed with. This dissenting report is a considerable piece of work and I acknowledge the efforts of the staff in Mr Gentleman’s office as well as my own. The Assembly may wish to review the staffing levels of non-executive members and consider allocating staff on the basis of members’ committee responsibilities to ensure we have the support we need to do this work.
Despite the assertions of the opposition leader and his efforts to abuse it, the Assembly’s committee system is not broken. However, it does require even-handedness, fairness and respect for other committee members and witnesses, including public servants, on the part of committee chairs.
MADAM SPEAKER: The question is that the report be noted. Is someone going to speak or I will close it down.
MR SMYTH (Brindabella) (10.45): I note Mr Gentleman does not jump to his feet to defend his abstention. Let us look at what happened here. Let us go to what happened here. We had a process as detailed by the Assembly. We had advice from the Clerk that said that the process that was followed met the standing orders. What did we have as an outcome? We had a report supported by the bipartisan committee of the Assembly—it was two Labor and two Liberal—that said that this budget should not be passed, that it is a budget of debt, it is a budget of deceit and it is a budget of
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