Page 2117 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 15 August 2006
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These people are bereft of honour and integrity. These people have said things in one place and said another thing on another occasion.
This is a Deputy Chief Minister who, before the last election, allowed her staff to say—and it was never corrected—“There will be no school closures in the next term of the Stanhope government.” She allowed it to be said, it was said and she never corrected it. She has come into this place, and has gone to other places, and said, “I never said that.” She may not have personally said those words, but she did not let it be fixed. It is like Henry II saying, “Who will rid me of this tempestuous priest?” It is allowing somebody else to do her dirty work for her. She did not ever set it straight. She allowed it to be said in public: there will be no school closures. She closes schools. She connives with the current Minister for Education and Training to close even more schools so that we have 40 schools closing in the life of this government. Then she goes to a state conference and says something different.
When put under pressure what do they say? “It was not me; it was 36 faceless other blokes and they made me do it.” These people can never be believed again. They can never be believed again because they say what is convenient in one place and they renege on that undertaking somewhere else. These people should resign because the office of minister in this territory or in any other government is a very high office from which much is expected. You cannot make it up as you go along. You cannot speak to a particular audience and undermine what you say elsewhere. You must have integrity. You must speak the truth. These people at some stage have not spoken the truth.
MR SPEAKER: Order! You ought to withdraw that. Withdraw that.
MRS DUNNE: I withdraw it, Mr Speaker. Somewhere these people have spoken the truth and it is up to people to work out when. Mr Hargreaves talked about that debate the other day and I understand that there were split—
MR SPEAKER: Mrs Dunne, that is just another imputation. Withdraw it.
MRS DUNNE: I withdraw the imputation, Mr Speaker. Mr Hargreaves spoke about the speeches given at the conference the other day. He talked about a particular speech in which the speaker talked about the axis of weasels in the ALP and he talked about “the unloved, the unknown and the unhinged”. At that stage the speakers in that debate did not know that the ministers were going to rat on their own colleagues so he did not have the opportunity to talk about the unscrupulous. We have in this place unscrupulous members who do not have the integrity to resign when they turn away deliberately from their Chief Minister’s code of practice, and we have a weak Chief Minister who does not have the bottle to enforce his code of practice. That is why this Assembly should vote for the motion of want of confidence in these members.
It is not about education. It is not about whether these people support a moratorium or extended consultation. That is a debate for another day. This debate today is about members and their integrity. The people who hold the highest offices in this territory do not have the integrity to carry them out and that is why we should have no confidence in Ms Gallagher, the Deputy Chief Minister, and the Attorney-General, Mr Corbell.
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