Page 9 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 25 February 2014
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Jorian Gardner and was publicly warned of the extreme risk of doing so and was warned by us in this place where she expressed full confidence in Mr Gardner.
She funded this event from a public purse and she appointed the director without due process. She promoted this activity as part of the Multicultural Festival and she failed to ensure that the acts of the Fringe Festival would, at the very least, not cause offense. When the multicultural community were insulted, and we know that they were, instead of an apology she brushed aside their concerns. At every single step she failed. As the chair of the multicultural forum says—and I again quote her:
Those who made the decision that allowed that to happen should be made accountable and we should know who they are.
We know who they were. We know who made that decision and we know who should be held accountable. Sadly, there is more. I will let the shadow minister comment in detail but there is simply no way we can escape the fact that this minister abjectly failed the most vulnerable in our society and she will not accept responsibility.
The ACT Labor government was warned through the Vardon review of the care and protection system that there is a critical lack of quality placement options for children and young people needing care and protection in the territory. Two years ago the Public Advocate slammed this minister saying that Care and Protection had breached the law 24 times which had a serious and detrimental impact on children for whom the Director-General has responsibility. Madam Speaker, it breached the law 24 times. The minister’s appalling response was not to address the problem. It was to get her own lawyer to disagree with the finding.
These results, these failures and this minister’s behaviour are a disgrace. In other parliaments—in any other parliament, in fact—she would have been removed or replaced. We know the real reason that that has not occurred. It is not that the Chief Minister has full confidence in her minister but she simply has no choice. Frankly, that is not a test as to whether a minister should stay in place in the executive.
The test of this place as to whether there is any accountability for ministers who broadcast the most disgusting and vile abuse about federal ministers or any accountability of ministers who cause insult to the multicultural community is whether there is any repercussion for ongoing abject failures of process and policy that leave children in homes with no heating, no bedding and glass on the floor.
The test is whether there is any response for a system that breaches the law 24 times. The test is whether we maintain confidence in a minster who gives $20,000, without due process or any oversight, to an event that includes a Nazi stripper in the middle of a multicultural festival and does so against all warnings. The test is one of what standards we accept in this parliament. It is a test not only for the minister but for the Chief Minister and for Mr Rattenbury.
Ms Burch has embarrassed the territory. She has embarrassed the government and she has embarrassed herself. She now has a national profile and it is not a good one. But the test should not be the ridicule that she has faced in the media but the standards that
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