Page 2185 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 15 August 2006
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Dr Foskey and you, Mr Deputy Speaker—attempted to amend, as is appropriate, the report. The bottom of the first column in this article from Monday talks about Ms MacDonald’s intervention. Well, it is hardly intervention. She has been hauled over the coals and she has had to pay for it herself. I would like an assurance from the Speaker that Ms MacDonald paid for her return from New Zealand from her own funds because, as a result of her ineptitude, it would be inappropriate for the government or the CPA to pay for it. The article said that her intervention came after a fiery but brief meeting on Friday when Ms MacDonald had left the country.
For the record, Ms MacDonald left on Wednesday. We are told that she had to go then because she was off on Assembly business with one of our colleagues and that was the last plane she could get. The only colleague that I have who is off on Assembly business is Mrs Burke. She left for New Zealand on Sunday, not Wednesday. Seats were certainly available on the flight that she took. Certainly seats were available on the Qantas flight that afternoon that Ms MacDonald could have taken. So there is some answering to be done.
The last paragraph in the Canberra Times that I want to address reads:
The Opposition would not cede a vote to offset Ms MacDonald’s absence: a practice usually observed during votes in the Assembly but very rarely used in committees.
I have never seen it used in committees. There is no pairing system in committees—there never has been; there never should be. I remind members that this could all have been avoided if the recommendation from the Assembly that finished in 2001 allowing electronic communications had been accepted. In the 2004-04 Assembly the Labor Party removed the recommendation; they did not like to have phone conferencing at deliberative meetings. If that modern use of technology had been in place this could all have been avoided. So they have fouled their own nest in this case. But there are no pairs, and there was no pair given before Ms MacDonald left. So let us get the record straight.
Then, of course, we come to the extraordinary telephone calls. Committee deliberations are meant to be in secret. It allows people to be frank and fearless. It allows—
Mr Gentleman: You have just spent the last 15 minutes talking about them.
MR SMYTH: No. Once the minutes are tabled it is all public. You have got to learn the procedures. You have got to know how this works before you interject. You have been here for almost two years now so you should know this, otherwise go back to MLA school and get somebody to explain it to you.
Then we had the extraordinary phone calls on Friday afternoon from Mr Friedewald, the chief of staff of the Chief Minister, to the chief of staff of the Leader of the Opposition asking for a pair. The question has to be asked: how did that man know that a pair was needed? He could only have known if somebody had revealed to him the internal workings of the committee. Then, even more extraordinary, on Saturday afternoon we have a phone call from the Chief Minister, Mr Stanhope, to the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Stefaniak, demanding a pair, laying down the law that there be a pair: “How dare you not give us a pair!” How did the Chief Minister know about the internal workings of the
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