Page 381 - Week 01 - Thursday, 11 December 2008
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MRS DUNNE: Again, Mr Seselja reminds me, after the fire, it was a matter of saying: “The buck stops with me. If you’re going to blame anyone, blame me.” That was a good sound bite two days after the fires, but he didn’t actually carry through with that. In the same way, he was chastened at 7 o’clock this morning on ABC radio, but by quarter to nine he had got over his remorse and he was out again, fighting with the Auditor-General.
I think that the Auditor-General in the ACT is very brave. Auditor-Generals often cause governments problems. They criticise governments. That is what we pay them to do. I do not know of another jurisdiction in this country where the Chief Minister or the Premier would go after the Auditor-General in quite that way.
Mr Doszpot: Or a coroner.
MRS DUNNE: Or a coroner. Of course, we know exactly in what regard this government holds the Auditor-General because she came to the government before the last budget and said, “I don’t have enough funds to do my work.” The public accounts committee said: “We agree with the Auditor-General. She should have an increase in her funds.” Every party represented in this place, except the Labor Party, agrees that the Auditor-General does not have funds. This is one of the things that I will be watching in the run-up to the next budget: will this government have the intestinal fortitude to properly fund the Auditor-General after she has criticised them so much? We will watch this space. It will be a test of the character of this Chief Minister—will he have the guts to do what is necessary and fund the Auditor-General, or will he try and stifle her by cutting off her funds?
We are here today doing something that we could have done in April. Mr Smyth had the solution, which is essentially the same solution as we are dealing with today. We could have done this in April. We could have been through the process; the whole thing could have been approved. It may not have been an election issue. Jon Stanhope made it an election issue. It would have continued to be a thorn in the side of the people of the ACT, except that Jon Stanhope has learnt one thing from the election result, and only one thing—that seven does not beat 10. He has seven votes in this place, and the only reason we are here today implementing the Liberal Party’s solution is that he has no alternative. This is not some Damascus-like conversion; this is not the Chief Minister saying: “I was wrong. I’ve misled the community. I’ve allowed people to be badly treated. I’ve sat by and watched officials pilloried.” This is not the Chief Minister having a change of heart. This is the Chief Minister learning to count.
There is one point amongst all the other points in here that are alarming, and my colleagues Mr Seselja and Mr Smyth have referred to many quotes from here. This may be tangential, but I will put it on the record because it concerns me considerably. At paragraph 2.54 on page 20, in relation to the involvement of Actew, the Auditor-General says:
ACTEW advised Audit that:
The ACTEW Board was appraised of the project and considered papers on two occasions, in December 2007 and April 2008. The Board only agreed to provide funding of $300,000 to the development of the business case. There
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