Page 4183 - Week 13 - Thursday, 27 November 2014
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done.” As I said, in going through these issues, they are the sorts of the questions that were not answered. Quoting from my speech in February 2012, I said:
Again, I have been told that that will be resolved, negotiations are going on, there is engagement with the community and that will be advised.
But I am concerned that the government was unable to provide those answers. Although we have assurances from the government that those two issues will be addressed, the Canberra Liberals are supporting this legislation today on the presumption that it will be addressed. But I look forward to receiving assurances and looking at that in the regulations and in further briefings and seeing that those issues have been resolved.
I think it is pretty clear that we were being told that all of the issues, all the concerns relating to this legislation were going to be fixed up, were going to be addressed. We took the government in good faith. We accepted that but what then flowed out of it were these ridiculous measures. I will quote the Canberra Times, which stated:
Forking out cash to supervise kids’ BBQs? Don’t be a silly sausage.
There were impacts of this legislation that were clearly not articulated to the opposition and, indeed, maybe even the government. But certainly the opposition was not, in its briefings with department officials and in the content of legislation that was tabled here and the speeches from the minister, made clear about the impact of this legislation. It was pretty shabby. As a result we saw the impact in the supporting legislation. I will quote again from my speech from 2012:
There are gaps in terms of information and how it is going to be implemented, and they need to be addressed. We need to be assured that this legislation will be effectively implemented on the ground, because the Auditor-General has told us that the current regime is not. We support this bill with those quite significant caveats.
I think that in retrospect I regret supporting that legislation, because the assurances we were given and the information that we were provided with were inadequate. The assurances that we were given proved to be an error. It is an interesting debate that we have had and it is good that we are back here to tidy it up, but I do note that it took a bit of time to get the minister across the line on this. I do recall reference to the quiche police, the barbeque squad and the fritter brigade. They are the minister’s words when talking about this issue. I did ask a question in November 2013 about this issue:
Minister, if you still believe that it is a good thing to have a food safety supervisor for the sausage sizzle, why have you backflipped?
Ms Gallagher said:
I have listened to the community, Mr Hanson, which is a job that our politicians are meant to do. I do not eat from sausage sizzles.
I suppose that the minister has said that it is not her problem. She said that she did not eat from sausage sizzles. She said, “I do not eat sausages.” But she said that she had
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