Page 3572 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 25 August 2009

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Mrs Dunne: Tell us about the survey.

MR HARGREAVES: Mrs Dunne continues to shriek across the chamber like a parrot with its leg caught in the fence. I do wish you would just give a person half a chance. She is doing this, of course, because she is trying to hide their own inconsistency.

Mr Hanson: Oh, really?

MR HARGREAVES: Yes, really. You do not remember this, Mr Hanson, because you were not in this place then but Mr Smyth does. He was here when Mr Pratt put his bill forward to ban fireworks, quoting the very stuff that Mrs Dunne is talking about. Mrs Dunne supported the bill to ban fireworks in the party room and then, when the bill came on for debate, she was not here; she was not in the chamber. Was that because she did not support the actual view of her own party room? Did she say, “Oh, I couldn’t support my leader; I’m going to be somewhere else”? What we have got is the double back-flip and pike; degree of difficulty 0.4.

Mrs Dunne: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: Mr Hargreaves has been attempting to un-answer my question in relation to his survey for three minutes. Could I ask you to get him to answer the question in relation to his survey.

MR SPEAKER: Yes. Mr Hargreaves, I think you have digressed from the question some distance.

MR HARGREAVES: In fact, I did. The reason why I did was to show up the absolute inconsistency in Mrs Dunne’s implication behind her question.

The surveys that we received indicated to us that people had given up reporting matters to the authorities because there was no point in them being there. There was no point in them coming.

Mrs Dunne is—

Mr Hanson: Can you point to that for us?

Mrs Dunne: Where does it say that?

MR HARGREAVES: Here we go! Do you know, they are going off like tom thumbs on cracker night, this lot.

I think it is salient at this point in time to indicate to the Assembly that, in mounting an argument, I provided each member opposite with a fairly thick book of information on which they could take a position. In there, I did not refer to their previous positions—Mr Smyth’s own position supporting a ban when he was a minister; Mr Smyth’s position supporting a ban when Mr Pratt put the thing on the table. Now he has changed his mind. He has either changed his mind or Mrs Dunne has rolled him in the party room. I do not know which. I honestly do not know which. Is it a case of Mrs Dunne one, Mr Smyth nil? I do not know.


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