Page 877 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 2 May 2007
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Mr Stanhope: Regularly quoted as a model for its time.
MRS DUNNE: The Chief Minister says it is a model. It is no model that anyone should be proud of. In opposition he was going to play hell with a stick. His government was going to be clean, it was going to be open, there was going to be no whiff of corruption, no whiff of hiding things furtively behind doors. And what do we have today? We have a Chief Minister who cannot account for what his officials do and spend on their credit cards. We have a Chief Minister who allows his officials to slap conclusive certificates on documents to hide what they do not find convenient.
This is because—and the Chief Minister has admitted it—we have majority government. This is the same Jon Stanhope who, before the last election, said that the people of Canberra had nothing to fear from majority government. What they have to fear is a complete abrogation of open government. What they have to fear are abuses of the corporate credit card. What they have to fear are people making inappropriate expenditure on their credit cards and senior officials refusing to answer the questions of people and of investigative journalists. And what happens when everything gets really inconvenient? A conclusive certificate is slapped on it so that people in the ACT will never find out.
What we have to fear today is a complete abandonment of any pretence that this is a minister interested in open and accountable government, because he has a majority behind him and he can do what he likes.
MR SESELJA (Molonglo) (5.30): What we have seen here today is the confected outrage from Jon Stanhope that the opposition would dare to raise the issue of the expenditure of government funds.
Mr Stanhope: Are you going to attack public servants too?
MR SESELJA: Mr Stanhope’s central point seems to be that by asking questions about credit card use we are somehow attacking public servants; that when the opposition ask questions, legitimate questions, about expenditure, that is an attack on public servants.
When Jon Stanhope was the opposition leader, of course it was okay for him to ask questions about credit card use by government officers. In question No 146, Mr Stanhope asked the then Minister for Education, in relation to the use of credit cards by government officers: “Which officers within your portfolio hold government credit cards? What credit cards are operated by those officers? What credit limits apply to each of those officers?” The list goes on. And he asked the then Minister for Urban Services: “Which officers within your portfolio hold government credit cards? What credit cards are operated by those officers?” He asked the same questions of the then Minister for Justice and Community Safety, the Minister for Health and Community Services—and the list goes on. So it was okay for Jon Stanhope to go on a fishing expedition and try and name and shame particular officers.
I note that today when we asked our questions, and yesterday, we did not name particular officers; we referred to employee A, employee B, employee C et cetera, yet
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