Page 2699 - Week 09 - Thursday, 8 August 2013
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only fair and proper that when you have got a culture like that, where that has been exposed, and senior officials just thought, “Yes, that is the way it goes,” that we do ask the hard questions. I make no excuse for that.
But I would also say that that is not something that is just a Liberal Party thing or a Labor Party thing. That is the nature of committees. I would reflect on champions of committees like Senator John Faulkner. Everyone who worked in the federal public service or as a minister when Senator Faulkner was running committees, and when he asked the probing questions and the hard questions he asked to get to the bottom of matters, had great respect for what he did. This was the case on both sides of politics. I would say that we will not go light on officials or on ministers if they are not forthcoming with the truth, if they are not providing the evidence that we are seeking, because that is the job of the committee.
It seems that the Labor members of committees think that it is their job to produce a report with 575 recommendations congratulating the government. It is not. That is not what committees are here for. Committees are not here to provide a long list of “attaboys” for the government. They are there to scrutinise, to inquire, to get to the bottom of what the executive is doing. That is the purpose of them, and it is exactly as the Clerk said—to provide adequate mechanisms to enforce the accountability of the executive to the parliament.
What is the motive for the government not supporting this? I suppose they do not want the committees to uncover things, to scrutinise them. We will continue to do our job. But this is what this will do, and Mr Rattenbury needs to take heed. It is not just about what reports are provided and what questions are asked in committees; it is also a matter of what inquiries are being conducted. Just as we were stymied from getting those further reports from CIE, what this will mean is that when a committee is wanting to refer an inquiry into a particular matter, it will be very difficult—
It being 45 minutes after the commencement of Assembly business, the debate was interrupted in accordance with standing order 77. Ordered that the time allotted to Assembly business be extended by 30 minutes.
MR HANSON: What is the government’s motive? I think there are two parts to it. They do not want the scrutiny of government, despite the rhetoric. Secondly, I do think that the minister wants a plausible reason not to appoint a sixth minister. She wants to say, “My members are so busy on committees I could not possibly appoint a sixth minister.” So that chair will remain vacant while she has got that excuse. Perhaps members of the Chief Minister’s backbench are in best position to ask the Chief Minister why it is that she would rather have her members tied up on committees than appoint one to the executive. I will let them draw their own conclusions.
With regard to Mr Rattenbury, I think he has sold out. It is as simple as that. He has had a choice about whether he wants to run, I suppose, a Greens agenda, a government agenda or his own agenda through this place. Certainly all we are seeing from him now is his running an agenda that suits him at the time. He is a great advocate one minute for one principle, and then he is very accomplished at running the exact opposite argument when it suits him.
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