Page 3333 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 19 August 2009
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then the authority of the chair is going to be considerably undermined in this place. It is a reflection on your ruling and it is disorderly.
MR SPEAKER: Mr Corbell, there is no point of order. I did not interpret Mr Seselja’s comments as being a reflection on the chair.
MR SESELJA: Thank you, Mr Speaker. This is what we get from Mr Corbell so often: when he does not like the argument, he seeks to frustrate it by taking spurious points of order. We do need to go back to this. They have not been frank and forthcoming. They have taken every opportunity that they can to not answer these questions, whether it is using standing orders or otherwise. You have to ask why, and you have to ask of the Greens in this situation why they would vote against a paragraph of a motion that simply calls for disclosure.
Surely, one of the things that the Greens often talk about is seeking disclosure and ensuring that we have accountability in this place. We saw it yesterday; we saw it in question time: the government, to the maximum extent possible, will look to avoid answering questions if they can get away with it. They will do it in whatever way they can, through giving non-answers, refusing to answer or in whatever way they can. So we have sought to ensure that they have to give an account. The Greens are voting against that, and I think that is particularly disappointing.
In relation to the Greens’ amendment, we believe that the motion should stand as it is. The deal has been done between the Labor Party and the Greens on this. This is better than nothing, I suppose. It is better than nothing that we have some action rather than none. But the reality is, and we maintain our position, that there is an inherent conflict of interest. Mr Corbell can try and skirt around it all he likes, but the CEO sits on the board, is a public servant and is answerable to the minister.
The CEO would presumably be the person who is actually leading any investigation. It is the CEO that has the resources to do such a thing. I cannot imagine that it would be primarily each of those individual board members who would be leading that investigation. The CEO would inevitably be taking the lead on that. And there is a fundamental conflict when they are a public servant.
If they want to change that, if they want to bring forward legislation that would see the CEO removed from being a public servant and become totally independent, we would certainly have a look at that. But what we have at the moment is this challenge where the person being asked to lead an investigation is answerable to the minister. It is an investigation that inherently will look at actions of ministers, yet we have the Labor Party and the Greens deciding that that is the way to do it. You do not deal with issues around conflict of interest by creating another potential conflict of interest. That is what this does.
Ms Hunter: You’re just slurring the reputation of every commissioner in the ACT.
MR SESELJA: We get the interjections again. It is absolutely nothing to do with the individual. We could say the same of any public servant. It is inappropriate for any of the thousands of public servants in this town to be sought to be tasked with investigating their own government. They are not separate from the government. You cannot investigate yourself.
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