Page 4101 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 26 November 2014
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Mr Smyth: Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I am happy to withdraw anything you find offensive.
MR ASSISTANT SPEAKER: Mr Hanson.
MR HANSON: I did not get very far, but I will not criticise the motion because it has now been ruled that to criticise a motion in this place is unparliamentary. That is an extraordinary step, I think, but it is a new precedent to say that one cannot criticise a motion that anyone moves in this place because that would be unparliamentary. From now on, in this parliament no-one will be in a position ever to criticise a motion lest it be ruled out of order. Extraordinary!
Let me go to the hypocrisy of those opposite. Note, I am not calling any of them individually a hypocrite—and this has been ruled on before, Mr Assistant Speaker. Let me go to the hypocrisy. Ms Berry just stood up in this place—and I would certainly grant her leave to correct the record for misleading this place, which she has done—and said in her statement, “Those opposite have not done anything or said anything with regard to federal government job cuts.” We do not like—
Ms Burch: On a point of order, just for clarification, a reference to a member misleading needs to be made in a substantive motion, I understand. Mr Hanson made reference that Ms Berry has misled this place.
MR ASSISTANT SPEAKER: I will uphold the point of order. Mr Hanson, could you withdraw that, please.
MR HANSON: I will withdraw and consider coming back with a substantive motion, unless Ms Berry does address the issue, because you cannot come into this place and not tell the truth. You cannot do that. Because Ms Berry is not particularly informed much of the time, she may be unaware of the very clear position that the opposition have taken, which is to be consistent. We say we do not want to see job cuts; we do not want to see positions removed from the ACT, whether it is federal Labor or whether it is federal Liberal. That has been our position, which is very different from that of those opposite, which is that only Liberal job cuts are a problem.
As Mr Smyth has outlined in this place on many occasions, of the 16,000 job cuts that had been experienced, 14,500 were made by federal Labor. So do not come into this place all high and mighty, using a political opportunity to criticise the federal government, and make excuses for your own poor management of the ACT economy when the reality is that 70 or 80 per cent of the jobs cut in the federal public service in the ACT were done by Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard and Wayne Swan. And those opposite who continue to bury their head in the sand about that, who continue to essentially rewrite history, are doing a great disservice to themselves.
There will be many more opportunities to debate this issue, I imagine, but I do invite Ms Berry to get her head out of the sand, to become aware of debates that have occurred, and to be aware of what people have said quite properly, before she comes into this place and maligns, where she does not tell the full truth and where she essentially just repeats Daddy’s lines, the unions’ lines, rather than actually getting across the substance of the debate.
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