Page 2374 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 31 July 2018
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MR HANSON: Thank you. I have spoken to members of the Waramanga community today and I have explained what has happened in this process. It is fair to say that they are disappointed because they have put a lot of work into this. They have put their trust in the government, they have put their trust in their minister, and that minister has abused that trust. She has put the community in a position where they have been strung along. Why didn’t the minister have the fortitude, the strength or the honesty to look the community in the eye on that day, on 21 March, and say, “No, I’m not going to commit to this; you’re going to go along to the process with everybody else”? She could have said that, but she did not.
Mrs Dunne: She could have been more honest.
MR HANSON: She could have been more honest, Mrs Dunne. She did not do that; she committed to it and misled the community.
This is unsatisfactory. But moving forward from here, what happens? The community now have to go along to a process. They have to start again. They have to go along and bid for what is a paltry amount, when you consider all of the work that needs to be done to our playgrounds across this community. You only need to listen to Mrs Jones in this place. She is away today, looking after her new child, but you only need to listen to Mrs Jones to understand the need for new playgrounds, the need for maintenance of existing playgrounds, and the paltry amount that is on offer from the government to do that.
They have to go and fight their battle again. Although the government said that they would commit to it, that is not true. They now have to go and bid for that again. Let me make it very clear: having made that commitment in this place, if, after going through that process and jumping through more hoops, the people of Waramanga are told, “No, the government is not committing to a new playground,” what is very clear is that the minister will have misled this Assembly. She said she had committed to it, and if that process does not eventuate in a new playground for Waramanga then it is very clear that she will have misled this Assembly and it is quite possibly the case that she would be in contempt of the Assembly. She would be in contempt of her own support for a motion by backflipping.
We will wait for that process to roll out, because my objective here, and my desire, is to make sure that we get a new playground for Waramanga, rather than play politics on this. But let me be very clear: at the end of the day, if the Waramanga community go there and jump through more hoops, having been misled by the minister, and if that does not eventuate, the minister had better watch out, because I will be back in here and I will be confronting her with what will then be very clear to have been a misleading of this Assembly and potentially—it will be a matter for the Assembly to decide—a contempt of this Assembly.
MS LE COUTEUR (Murrumbidgee) (11.26): I am pleased, in a way, that I have become the third speaker because we all have different takes on what happened here. Minister Fitzharris, Mr Hanson and I were all part of the debate about a Waramanga
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