Page 2466 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 17 June 2009
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MR SESELJA: They did. Nothing in anything that the Minister for Health said indicated that there were politically motivated or frivolous objections. The Minister for Planning refused to come back. He thumbed his nose at the Assembly. I am not aware of a precedent in this place—there may be but I am not aware of it—where a minister has been recalled to a committee or called to come before a committee and has blatantly refused. I am not aware of such a thing. The question for the Assembly now—and I note the circulated amendment—is: what do we think of such an attitude from a minister? How do we respond?
I put it to members across the chamber—Labor, Liberal and Green members—that if we simply do nothing when a minister refuses or if, indeed, we admonish, and I am not quite sure what that is, or if we go for a weak censure or some form of weaker response by the Assembly, ministers will continue to defy the Assembly, will continue to defy committees and will continue to thumb their noses at scrutiny processes. It is reasonable and legitimate that we ask questions. It is legitimate that when we have concerns about a process we call the minister back to explain. When a committee feels that a minister has deliberately acted to avoid scrutiny it is reasonable that we ask these questions.
The issues are separate. There is the issue of the misleading public statements about politically motivated frivolous comments and there is the issue of contempt for the Assembly. We are not going to go into the merits of the call-in today. Our position is clear. We made it very clear that we believe that if the minister has a reasonable and genuine belief that not calling in this development would lead to unreasonable delays, we will support the call-in. That is what I told the media last night and that is what was recorded today and on the radio. I said, “The onus is now on the minister to actually show how he formed that reasonable belief.”
Ms Gallagher: It has been called in, Zed. You have got to have a view now. Come on. It has happened.
MR SESELJA: The Minister for Health interjects. She seems to think it is a bit of a joke. She seems to think it is a bit of a joke that Minister Barr acts in this way. The issue is for him to actually put the case. So far all he has said is that there was letter to the editor and therefore he had to call it in. If that is the new standard, that when a letter to the editor is written that is politically motivated frivolous and therefore there needs to be a call-in, then you would expect that pretty much all major projects will be called in.
If that is the government’s policy position, they should take that to the Assembly. They should move an amendment to the act. We happen to believe that the call-in power is an important power. It is one that should be used in certain circumstances, but you should justify it. Justifying it by saying that there is a letter to the editor from a guy who never, ever appealed against the development application is weak and it is pathetic.
It goes to why the minister did not want to come back—because his argument was so weak. His argument is so pathetic that he did not want to be subject to questioning of
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