Page 1689 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 21 August 2007
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MR STEFANIAK: You miss the point, minister: we were entitled to them. No-one is telling you exactly how to answer questions but the idea of an estimates committee is to elicit some information and not just to have this absolutely vicious banter towards the end and implications about not only Mr Pratt but also Dr Foskey. She came in for a bit of a caning as well. As I said, a little bit of friendly repartee and having a go at each other is fine, but on this occasion it was totally over the top. In terms of the work of that committee, it was very much a wasted afternoon when it came to eliciting information.
We might have finally got somewhere in relation to the sign at Point Hut Crossing—a very simple matter but one on which Mr Hargreaves seemed to go off on a tangent, to the extent that he effectively called Mr Pratt a liar. It just got completely out of hand. What is more, I think it actually continued off-transcript for a little while as well. So it was all very unedifying, very regrettable and very wrong in terms of how ministers should behave. People who were there were, I think, quite appalled, and the matter is worthy of being referred to a privileges committee. If we do not take some sort of stand and send this matter to a privileges committee, what sort of standards do we have?
Mr Hargreaves complained, over a number of pages of the transcript, about Mr Pratt basically doing his job—“bombarding my department with whole heaps of requests for information purporting to come from constituents”. He seemed to have a real problem with how Mr Pratt dealt with requests from constituents and made an imputation about those requests. On page 694, for example, when he was accused of calling Mr Pratt a liar, he said: “This is a very serious thing.” Mrs Burke said: “It is a very serious thing.” Mr Hargreaves continued:
… and I need to respond very, very, very briefly. Firstly, I have sprung Mr Pratt on this occasion before, and it comes down to this. I am not accusing Mr Pratt of lying. I am just saying that I do not believe a thing from Mr Pratt until I have been able to verify it independently.
He said that, when he had verified it independently, he would respond. He continued:
His behaviour over the last few days and its impact on other people has been so despicable that I will attempt to verify everything that I get from him.
That is not particularly ministerial behaviour, I would submit, even if a member had given you some cause. In a public hearing like that, with significant numbers of bureaucrats and possibly members of the public and members of the media present, it is incredibly stupid and appalling behaviour.
He also baited Dr Foskey by saying that he was not going to subsidise her roller skates. That may be quite innocuous as a once-off, but there are any number of examples in the course of this amazing diatribe during this incredible hearing of the estimates committee on that particular afternoon.
It contrasted with the behaviour of a number of other ministers. Some of them certainly were not angels, and I have referred to that in my comments in the report. I would urge all of you to be a little more civil, but at the end of the day a lot of that is
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