Page 2379 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 16 June 2009
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Mr Seselja: New lows.
MR SMYTH: New lows. These are new lows. Mr Seselja is right; these are new lows. We saw the revelation that the words “winery”, “cellar door” and “vineyard” were blacked out of an FOI document and claimed to be personal information. Yet the actual location—“We live on a block located next to Miowera”—was left in. The actual thing that identified where they lived—the address was blacked out but the reference to being next door was left in.
Then we saw the details of the call in, when Minister Barr and Minister Gallagher refused to tell the committee what really was going on.
Mr Speaker, I will take an extension if I may. (Extension of time not granted.)
MR SESELJA (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (5.38), in reply: Before I summarise some of the issues, let me say that I had not intended responding to Ms Burch’s contribution, but I think there is a need. There is a need. Mr Smyth has handled most of the embarrassing part where she criticises things not being in there—things she voted against, which is embarrassing.
The only thing really to say in response to Mrs Burch’s tirade in her dissenting report is this. She spent all of her time, instead of looking at the budget, critiquing the opposition. That is nice; it is fun. But you spent all of your time asking dorothy dixers. We did see one of the most embarrassing moments in the committee when Mr Hargreaves was there. Mr Hargreaves was answering the dorothy dixers before they had even been asked by Ms Burch. He knew exactly what was coming. Then we would see Ms Burch taking instructions from Mr Hargreaves’s staff members.
That was the attitude Ms Burch took. It was probably less than what we would expect of government backbenchers. I think there has been a tradition of government backbenchers asking some hard questions of ministers. We saw no attempt. We just saw an attack on us, which we do expect but it does need to be put into the context of what we saw going on in there.
Throughout the estimates process, we saw a number of issues. I summarised a lot of those in my opening speech. The lack of a credible plan is critical, because at this time that is what we need. We do need a credible plan for restoring the budget to surplus, and we did not see one. We saw very concerning politicisation and an attempt to politicise the public service, and we saw it in all sorts of ways. I think there are a number of things that will require further action once the Assembly has had time to absorb some of this, when we come back. Ministers and the government will have a lot to answer.
In the politicisation of the public service, we really saw new lows. To have the health minister simply calling the chief executive officer of the department of health and arranging an ad was rightly condemned by the committee as politicising the public service. We saw it also in relation to schools, with the chief of staff of the education minister doing the same, although there was some documentation to back this up and
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