Page 2474 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 17 June 2009
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Mr Barr is treating the people of Canberra with disrespect by not following the standing orders, by not following how this place is organised. It is about taking the precedent and the policies of the standing orders of this place seriously. This is what we expect everyone to do here. All of us have different policy ideas; all of us have different ambitions; all of us have different personalities. But this is what we were elected to do: follow the rules and attempt to ensure good government for the people of the ACT, as each morning, when we come to this place, we reflect.
It is obvious that a censure vote can be done in this place at any time that the Liberals and the Greens do not agree with the government but we have not felt at this stage it was the appropriate thing to do. We do not think it is appropriate to say “censured” every time a minister chooses to be disrespectful. We do not want to spend all our time doing censure motions.
Mr Seselja: Do one; do it early and maybe you will not have to do another.
MS LE COUTEUR: I think you are being an optimist there, I am afraid. We look more at this as a graduated approach at its start. As teachers would say, “You start low and you move up.”
I will move on a bit more actually to what Mr Barr seems to think is the substantive issue, that is, the call-in powers, which I think is an illustrative rather than a substantive issue. But in terms of the call-in powers, the Greens have always felt that the call-in powers are inherently politically and have always felt that they should be a disallowable instrument because of their political nature, as Mr Barr has highlighted.
For the record, we did not ask Mr Barr to call in the Telopea Park development. We asked a question because we had been told by other people that they had asked him and they had not received any response.
Mr Barr: So you asked on behalf of someone?
MS LE COUTEUR: Yes, we asked on behalf of people who had asked and who were unable to find out from the minister what in fact was going to happen to their question.
Getting back again to the issue in question, which is recalling ministers to the estimates process, I would have to say that Ms Gallagher did cooperate with the committee; she was being entirely reasonable. She came and discussed items of budget expenditure. She told us, and we accepted, that the car park was the linchpin of Canberra hospital’s capital works plans. My understanding is that over a period of years we are talking in the order of $1 billion. This is something that the estimates committee ought to be concerned with.
Ms Gallagher was very helpful. She answered a lot of questions, as did her staff, but Ms Gallagher’s knowledge of the planning process is limited. Ms Gallagher was not ever going to be the person who called this development in. Ms Gallagher was never
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