Page 690 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 20 March 2018
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The Chief Minister also went on radio and said that one of the great examples of transparency is the fact that the Dickson deal was made public. The only reason that the Dickson deal was made public was because I did a title search. I went into Dickson and did a title search. That is hardly publishing it on a website. That is hardly coming into this place and saying, “By the way, I gave four million bucks to the Tradies Club.” That is what happened.
The only reason that became public is because of a title search—one of the most obscure ways you can get information. It was not because there is a transparent government. It was not because the Chief Minister came into this place and said he had something to report. It was not because they had a strategy beforehand and made it clear that they would go through a procurement process to purchase this property. They tried to do it secretly and they got found out. And there is a lot more water to flow underneath that bridge in the coming weeks and months.
There is a very good reason why Andrew Barr would privately and personally have a view that he does not want journalists in Canberra, and that is because he does not want the truth told. He does not want the light shone into his administration, as Mr Parton said. This government have a lot to fear from transparency. That is why they are dragging the chain with regard to ICAC. That is why they do not make it public when they buy property in town. That is why they have all of these shady deals that nobody seems to know about until deep questions are asked and deep FOIs are requested.
There are many things that need to be revealed about this government, but when the leader of that government tells future journalists, journalists in training and current journalists that he hates them, that paints a very sorry picture, a very grim picture, for this jurisdiction.
It is disappointing that the Greens once again will do one thing in public and another thing in here. That is why we need journalists. We need journalists to actually expose that sort of behaviour, because we need integrity in politicians. We all need to be held to account: all of us; we in the opposition and those parties in government, too. It is not good enough to tell constituents one thing and do something totally different here in the Assembly. That is exactly what Ms Le Couteur and Mr Rattenbury do on a daily basis.
While Mr Rattenbury may be shackled to this government, and while Ms Le Couteur may be shackled to this government, they in fact put those shackles on. They are the ones who put themselves on that side of the chamber. You would think they would use an opportunity like this to create some artificial distance between themselves and the Labor Party. You would think this would be one of those rare opportunities when they could say, “We’re not really like Labor.” But they are not strategic enough to even identify that, because they have outsourced their strategy, outsourced their policy and outsourced their ethics to Andrew Barr. It is not good enough, and I think the Canberra community is finding out exactly what lack of integrity and credit this government have.
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