Page 5225 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 18 November 2009
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Minister Barr then rattled off a whole list of achievements; for instance, that the new board is working on a master plan. The old board had a master plan. It was held up by your government for five years. They wanted access to a block of land for five years. They could not get that. Apparently the new board can get that. So I am not sure whether he is suggesting that only insiders get access to government and get decisions out of government because, if he is, that is very sad and, indeed, highlights the conflict of interest argument that I was making.
Apparently the government does not listen to independent boards. They will not listen to boards chaired by a member of the bureaucracy under the control of the minister. That is a very dangerous situation and a very flawed argument from this minister.
We did have different stories from the two ministers. He made the statement “cannot support without significant amendments”. The amendments are not that significant. This is “Mr Spin” to the bitter end. The Treasurer was gracious; Mr Barr, spin right to the end. He spoke about wasting time and that it is a silly debate. Yes, we have wasted time on this. We have wasted time on this because the minister did not listen to the will of the Assembly when the Assembly said, “No, do not bring it into the bureaucracy; leave it with an independent board.” Too smart by half, he said: “I will get around what the Assembly said to me. I am not going to take no for an answer on this.” And he made those comments in the Assembly when the bill was not passed: “This is not the end of it.” And that is the problem.
Then we had the reference to Julius Sumner Miller: “Why is it so?” Why is it so? It is in this place today because of the arrogance of a minister. It is in this place today. Why is it so? Because we had a minister who failed to listen to the Assembly. Why is it so? Because we had a minister who has an inability to count to nine. Why is it so? Because we have got a minister who did not obey his legislation. Why is it so? Because we have got a minister who is too smart by half.
It is interesting that, in his press release when he appointed the new board, the minister said: “Isn’t it great? We are going to appoint more women to this board. This is an outstanding achievement.” Yet the first person he took off the board was a woman. So it was a very shallow achievement for a very short period of time. That is the shallowness of this minister, and we all recognise it well.
Minister Barr was so desperate to stack the board of EPIC, to have his own way, that he mucked it up. He simply could not count and he simply could not read. The minister has access to all the advice he requires—and we assume he took advice on that matter—and he still got it wrong. He was in such a hurry that he did not do the most basic checks of the instrument that he signed on 29 June 2009.
As a consequence of the haste of the minister, as a consequence of this minister’s haste to get around the Assembly, he was then forced to admit his error. We had the embarrassing back-down that has led to one of the amendments to my bill today, and he had to sack one of the public servants whom he had appointed to EPIC in such haste. This mistake by the minister reveals the minister’s true agenda all along. Having failed to abolish this board, he acted to appoint his own nominee, with indecent haste.
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