Page 3675 - Week 08 - Thursday, 19 August 2010
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if you provide us with the advice justifying the change to the accounting standard.” In relation to your traditional position on this, Mr Hanson, you have always claimed, or you claim now, that the accounting standard issue is irrelevant, that there were ways around it. Now you are saying, “We will condescend to actually support the government in relation to this if only you actually substantiate your advice in relation to the accounting standard.”
Why do you need advice in relation to the accounting standard if you think the accounting standard is irrelevant? You do not. It is just another confected reason to justify the position that we all know you are going to take in relation to whatever option we pursue, and that is you oppose it.
No matter which of the options is ultimately accepted, you will oppose it. We know you will. Just as you opposed everything we tried to do in the past, you oppose it because you are called the opposition. You have a single-track mind about it. It is not you, Mr Hanson—I know it comes as a dreadful shock to you that you are not in government—who will be at the negotiating table.
MR ASSISTANT SPEAKER: Excuse me, Chief Minister. Could you please address your remarks to the chair.
MR STANHOPE: Well, I am.
MR ASSISTANT SPEAKER: Thank you.
MR STANHOPE: Through you.
MR ASSISTANT SPEAKER: Mr Hanson is not in the chair, Chief Minister.
MR STANHOPE: I am addressing the spurious nonsense that actually was part and parcel of Mr Hanson’s recent address. I just cannot believe that anybody could be that dumb. I need to respond to the position and the points that he has made. That is all I am doing. I am rebutting and refuting the nonsense that was his presentation.
He and the Liberal Party need to understand that it is the government that is engaged in detailed, complex negotiations around this issue. Those negotiations continue. They will be part and parcel and at the heart of the successful achievement of any outcome in relation to this. In that context, we take technical advice from experts in accounting firms. Always in relation to these issues around commercial negotiations it is easy for oppositions to say, “Give us the documents, give us the advice.” That sort of advice is provided to governments involved in complex negotiations with strict understandings in relation to its commercial sensitivity and its commercial confidence.
You stand up and you posture. You are going to oppose for opposition’s sake, and you do not understand the business of government or the nature of government. But you stand up now and you say, “Our support is conditional on you providing us with a whole range of commercial-in-confidence information,” which you know we are not going to provide, which we cannot provide.
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