Page 1071 - Week 03 - Thursday, 26 February 2009
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I thought it was quaint for the attorney to say it was not an illegal act because it was not criminal; it was just an unlawful act. As one staff member said to me the other day, you say “potato” and I say “potarto”. But what it boils down to is that Simon Corbell broke the law. What we are dealing with here today is Simon Corbell breaking the law. He said, “Look, this is a short-term appointment; it does not matter.” If it was a short-term appointment the minister could have made an appointment for six months or less and would not have been required under section 228 of the Legislation Act to come and consult the committee, and he could have made a lawful appointment. He need not have broken the law.
He said that he was acting prudently. Well, the prudent thing was that on 16 or 17 October last year the attorney did not break the law. The person, who by his own admission has made thousands of these appointments, broke the law and he could have avoided it. He was badly advised and he does not have enough sense to recognise bad advice when he sees it. A man who has made thousands of appointments under section 228 of the Legislation Act got it wrong. He is the first law officer, the person most responsible for making proper appointments in this place.
Mr Corbell: I am sorry, I made a mistake. Sure; all right. You have never made a mistake in your life, have you, Mrs Dunne?
MRS DUNNE: We all make mistakes. The thing is that if this minister really thought that he had made a mistake, he would have at some stage shown some contrition. What he has done all through this is bob, weave and wiggle. He said it was a short-term appointment. Yes, it was a short-term appointment. It was up until 30 June this year. But legally he was required to consult with the committee. It was transitional. There is nothing in the Legislation Act that says you do not have to consult if it is transitional. There is nothing in the Legislation Act that says that if a committee has already ticked off on these people you do not have to consult them. There is nothing in the Legislation Act that gets Simon Corbell off the hook. The only thing that would have got him off the hook was to do it legally at the time. He did not do it legally at the time.
He relies on the scrutiny of bills committee that says that these appointments may be invalid. The scrutiny of bills committee concentrated on the appointment. The scrutiny of bills committee at no time—at no time—looked at whether or not the attorney acted legally in making the initial appointments. The scrutiny of bills committee said that it may not be absolutely necessary to make these validation appointments. That is the question that they raised. The thing is that no-one is absolutely sure whether we need to make these validation appointments. We have agreed that we need to make these validation appointments to remove all doubt, to act prudently in retrospect because Simon Corbell, the first law officer, the Attorney-General, was imprudent at the very least.
One of the things that needs to be clarified here is that when my committee wrote to Mr Corbell, we wrote about three sets of appointments. We wrote about the appointments under the Liquor Act, we wrote about the appointments to the Residential Tenancies Tribunal and we wrote about the appointment of the Official
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