Page 792 - Week 02 - Thursday, 12 February 2009
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I did question the minister across the chamber: “Are you sure that that is what it does? Show me where it does that.” I had two conversations afterwards, one in the lobby where the minister said, “I am really sorry, but the version that was tabled yesterday was not the version that I took to caucus; it was not the version that I supported; and I will circulate as a revised version the version that I took to my party, to my caucus.” I thought, “Good, fine, the minister has just made a mistake; so we will go on and deal with this amicably.” I did have another conversation with him where I asked the minister to correct the record, which he has done.
But since then, we now see that the minister has decided that he is not going to go down the path that he described in his introductory speech this morning. He has pulled back and said he is not going to do that. At 10.30 this morning the minister stood up here and said, “This is what this process will do.” He specifically said that while these documents are in dispute they will be lodged with the Clerk and members of the Assembly will be able to view them. He specifically said that. It is not in the motion, as it is on the notice paper; it is not in the motion that the minister provided for the Clerk yesterday. Since then the minister has, by his own admission, said that he will not go down that path.
What we have is either a minister who this morning misled me in the lobby when he said that this was a mistake and he misled the Assembly—and he admits that he misled the Assembly; he did come in here and say, “I misled the Assembly”—or, alternatively, the minister is so fickle, so flip-floppy, that he can change his policy position, a policy position that he held in December last year, a policy position that he held at 10.30 this morning, but by 2 o’clock this afternoon he had reneged on his policy position. This is an incompetent minister and it has been proved time and time again this week. He has now proved himself to be an incompetent manager of government business and a man who has only had one or two meetings with the truth in the last little while and whose word cannot be believed.
He made commitments to me in that lobby, and within two hours he had broken his commitment. His word is mud. And as a result of that, and reflecting on the concerns that the Liberal opposition has about the policy itself, I propose to move the amendments which have been circulated in my name that will reinstate the elements that the attorney said were in the motion, which are not, and will make this standing order comparable to the standing order which the government said that it was copying from the New South Wales upper house, standing order 52 in the New South Wales upper house. In addition, there are some grammatical and typographical errors which would be fixed up by this.
I seek leave to move my amendments.
Leave granted.
MRS DUNNE: I thank members. I move:
(1) omit “by the Chief Minister” wherever occurring;
(2) in paragraph (4) after “deemed to”, omit “be”;
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