Page 1072 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 6 May 2014
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
peddling confidential information about that inquiry and minutes of the inquiry to the minister so he has got more knowledge.
Now, what do you think the community is going to think about that, a process that they have already—every single one of them, Mr Coe tells me—said is a dodgy process? Now they realise that members of that committee are in cahoots with the minister to make it even more dodgy.
Mr Corbell: You have got no evidence.
MR HANSON: This is not a trivial issue. The minister is interjecting—
MADAM SPEAKER: Order! Mr Corbell, do not interject.
Mr Doszpot interjecting—
MADAM SPEAKER: No-one will interject in this debate. This is a serious debate and there will not be interjection.
MR HANSON: He says there is no evidence. The evidence is that the minister came in here and talked about a review of the minutes, that reviewing the minutes showed him certain things. He went into some detail about the internal process of the committee. That is your evidence. When he got caught by Mr Smyth he compounded it by trying to cover up and saying, “Well, we’ve got the minutes online. That’s where I got them.” That was not true. Then he came back in later on to say, “There’s nothing to see here. I never got the minutes. I didn’t know anything about it.” But a reading of the Hansard in black and white shows it. You want your evidence, minister; the minister wants his evidence. There is the evidence.
The point is that this has been a very poorly managed process. This is not trifling legislation. The impact of this legislation will be massive; it will be irreversible on the planning of the ACT—things like light rail and hospitals. It is going to circumvent a whole range of planning processes. The community is up in arms, and now we know that the minister was privy to what was going on in that committee and their processes. When he got caught out he then did everything he could to make it appear that he did not have that information or that it was available online: “Yep, got it. Go get it online.” And that was not true. He made it up on the spot to try and cover his tracks.
So, Madam Speaker, we really do not have a choice here. If we are going to uphold the standards of this place and if the government is going to uphold the standards of ministerial responsibility and say, “No, we do have a line here. We are going to uphold the standards of this place,” then action must be taken, because there is nothing else that is going to restore this community’s faith in the government, in this minister, in the committee process now that it has been corrupted, than for us to take the action, call it as it is, and for us to express our want of confidence in this minister.
Members, this has been a corrupted process. The minister has been caught out in black and white. There is only one option, and I urge you, in the strongest terms, to support this motion.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video