Page 1236 - Week 04 - Thursday, 4 May 2006
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Question resolved in the affirmative.
MR SPEAKER: The question now is that Mr Smyth’s motion, as amended, be agreed to.
MR SMYTH (Brindabella—Leader of the Opposition) (4.22): Mr Speaker, there is a question as to why the two amendments by the Labor Party have been moved today. The justification from Mr Corbell is: “Because we can. We are just asserting our right earned in the election. We have the numbers.” So the question is: if you had the numbers, why didn’t you do it last year? If this is to be the precedent in the way things operate, why wasn’t it done last year? The answer is that last year their budget was not in such dire straits, and they were not so desperate to cover the failings that are about to be revealed in this budget, and they do not want the deep inquiry that a committee chaired by somebody other potentially than a member of the government could do. They do not want a committee where the government do not have the majority of numbers on the committee—and you have to again ask why.
Why didn’t they do this last year when they had the numbers? Why didn’t they do as Mr Corbell said: “We’ll have three and you’ll have two. We’ll exclude the crossbenchers. But we’re going to run it, we’re going to chair it, we’re going to control it.” They did not do it last year because they wanted some sort of semblance of normality in the estimates committee. They wanted to show that, yes, they were fair and open minded but they were controlling it from behind.
This year, because of the state of the budget, they cannot afford that. They need total control. They want the chair, they want the votes. They do not want an estimates committee to scrutinise their activities—the ineptitude and the failings of the economic and budgetary management of the Chief Minister, Jon Stanhope, who has been asleep. He was alarmed when he found out the number of public servants. He was alarmed when he found out the budget was blown. And these amendments moved by Mr Corbell to my motion are the “Jon Stanhope, cover my butt amendments, because he isn’t going to be there to clean up my mess in the future”.
That is what people will see and that is what people will know. Already the word is out that Ted’s betrayed the Labor Party; he has betrayed the government by going early. And what he has done is put the focus, put the spotlight, put the heat on the Chief Minister and Treasurer, who cannot add up, who has been asleep at the wheel, who as minister for public administration did not know how many public servants he had, did not know that it had grown by 2,000, was alarmed that it had grown by 2,000 and now is simply going to use public servants as a balancing item on his budget.
That is why we have had the amendments to my motion. What should have been a simple two-minute debate to set up the estimates committee, as it normally has been in this place for many years, has been turned into high farce. I initially thought that maybe they were doing this to force Ms MacDonald to go back on the committee again: first, they crush her cabinet ambitions and now they force her onto the committee with Mr Gentleman and Ms Porter. But maybe it is just that they need three Labor members to combat two Liberal members; maybe they are just not good.
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