Page 2056 - Week 06 - Thursday, 7 May 2009
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This should be the most effective way of resolving these disputes. The government accepts that this process should continue to be available to members who will continue to support the application of these processes to resolve these types of disputes because, as Ms Hunter herself said in her speech, this is the way that we resolve these complex and contested matters. (Time expired.)
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (11.13): Unfortunately, we are here today essentially still debating the merits or not of the release of the 2006 functional review. I suppose I expected that we would be here doing this when we debated the process proposed by the Greens during the early part of this year. It is true that the Liberal Party were not desperately supportive of this process. We were of the view that the Greens should have supported the position we took—that the Assembly should call for the document, as we had attempted to do in the previous Assembly, and as Dr Foskey had done in the previous Assembly.
It was a long process for the previous Assembly to get to the stage where they agreed that we needed to use the terms and the powers of the Assembly to call for the document. We had been through a process where several members of the Assembly, through various requests under the Freedom of Information Act—from myself, from Mr Stefaniak—had attempted to obtain the document. There had been general calls for it in the Assembly. The public accounts committee had called for it and used the standing orders available to committees in relation to calling for documents in an attempt to obtain the document. There had been a report from the public accounts committee to the Assembly and, as a result of that, there had been a motion in the Assembly, supported by the then Green member, calling for the document. There was a very clear and drawn-out process which was agreed to by all the non-government parties in relation to the acquisition of this document.
The Greens, I think, thought that the process they set up was perhaps a more principled approach than simply calling for the document. I think they were wrong and I think this has been borne out by this process. We were prepared to go along with that, but we had already expressed our view that this was not the most desirable outcome and, in fact, had moved in December last year for the tabling of this document, which was not supported by the Greens. This could all have been over and dealt with by now, but we have gone through this process and it really boils down to the truculence of the Stanhope government.
The merits of the scheme proposed by the Greens and addressed today by the Speaker are important issues. It is clear from most of the comments made by members today that the system needs some refining, and it is quite simply the case that when the Leader of the Opposition put in his objection to the plea for privilege from the government, it was simply an objection. We were, in fact, waiting for an opportunity to make a submission, but it seemed to us that there was no scope for anyone to make a submission. We were only given the possibility of objecting.
There was material being compiled that could have been provided to the arbiter, had that opportunity arisen, but it did not arise. And the material is important. The argument put forward by the government is fallacious, and I do question the extent to which there was full disclosure by the government in relation to how they have dealt
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