Page 799 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 9 April 2014
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ACT political environment. They need to do some work. They need to demonstrate some credibility themselves on these issues rather than asking the taxpayer to fund some farcical board of inquiry. This is not a proposal supported by this government. We cannot support this motion today, and the opposition need to go and do some serious legwork themselves on these policy questions.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (10.24): I welcome debate on this motion today. Whilst I think that there are some significant issues in the building industry, I do not believe that the proposal put forward by Mr Coe to appoint a board of inquiry is the best way to proceed on this matter.
Certainly a board of inquiry under the Inquiries Act has extensive powers. They include the powers to subpoena and to issue search warrants. Board members have the same immunity as a Supreme Court judge. And the inquiry has the status of a legal proceeding for the criminal code. The appointment of a board of inquiry should be undertaken in circumstances where there is a suspected failure of due diligence or governance, or questions of criminal activity, fraud or corruption.
We have seen previous occasions where the Canberra Liberals have called for the use of the Inquiries Act in this place as a first point of call despite the fact that there are already a number of other probably more appropriate avenues for investigation. The example that springs to mind for me was that in 2012 they proposed that just such an inquiry be established to investigate the emergency department data issue. That was, instead, looked at by the Auditor-General. The Greens supported this at the time. We thought that that was a much more appropriate mechanism. And I know that the Canberra Liberals have cited that Auditor-General report frequently ever since. It reflects the fact that it did the job that needed to be done. It is about trying to find the right tool to get done the job that needs to be done.
It goes back to the conversation we had about the cost of the enlarged Cotter Dam last term. We ended up asking the ICRC to do the report. They came back with a very comprehensive economic analysis of the costs of the enlarged Cotter Dam which I think all members found very beneficial. We actually asked an organisation with the requisite skills to do the job that needed to be done.
I do not think that the issues that Mr Coe has raised today fit into the category of requiring a board of inquiry. I am not sure what category they do fit into, because Mr Coe has come with a very extensive range of issues which really warrant investigation in a range of different fora, in my view. The only common link is that they all link to the building and construction industry in Canberra, but within that it is a significant grab bag of different issues that need to be dealt with in different manners. Some of the issues have already been looked at for a number of years; some are still being looked into; and some are issues that go to government policy. But they certainly are a grab bag.
If I knew that there was one particular issue which Mr Coe thought particularly warranted such an inquiry, I would be more open to it—if there was some suggestion of a particular area of fraud, corruption or criminal activity, for example. But that is not the way the motion was presented. Normally, in the way a motion would be
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