Page 3938 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 25 August 2010
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and for the Little Company of Mary. In this context, it seems fair and it seems right, and in the interests of the openness that Mr Stanhope preaches of, that we should be given access to that advice. It seems perfectly reasonable to suggest that.
In the speech that she made there was no acknowledgement that her bungled proposal very nearly wasted $77 million of taxpayers’ money. There was no admission that she got it wrong. This gives me an opportunity to quote Mr Stanhope again. It brings me great joy:
We will try not to make mistakes, and if we do, we will be open about them.
This got me reflecting, over the last eight or nine years of the Stanhope government—however long it has dragged on for—whether you can ever recall them admitting to a mistake? I am trying to think of one. I invite whoever is going to respond on behalf of the government, be it Mr Stanhope or the Deputy Chief Minister, to outline their mistakes. I have only been here a couple years, and I accept that. Maybe Mr Smyth, who has been here significantly longer, can remember the times that Mr Stanhope got up and said, “We’ll be open about our mistakes. We’ll admit our mistakes. We’ll acknowledge them.”
I cannot remember for the life of me Mr Stanhope ever admitting to a single mistake. So it is no surprise, members, that, again, after bungling this fiasco of the Calvary purchase, there is no admission that there was a mistake made when quite clearly we very nearly made a $77 million mistake. It is the old Labor mantra: never admit you are wrong and never apologise. There is another element to that—
Mr Smyth: Never explain.
MR HANSON: And it is never explained. We are starting to demand some explanation and that is what this is all about. We would like to engage in this process as far as is possible. Our role is not to sign off or write a blank cheque. If we had done that 18 months ago we would be $77 million poorer. Our job is to examine, to scrutinise and to get into detail. That is what the community expect of us. They expect us to look at the options that are on the table, to judge them, to make an assessment and to provide our view of whether it is a good deal, whether it is a bad deal or whether there should be another option presented.
But for us to make an informed decision, for us to be able to do our job in the Assembly, it is very difficult if we do not have the necessary information. A large part of that—a substantive part, as the health minister says—is the accounting advice that has been provided. If we talk about the reason that they will not provide this advice that we are asking for it seems that it is an excuse about commercial in confidence. Again, let me quote Mr Stanhope from 2001:
Under Labor, the ACT Government and its agencies will restrict the use of commercial confidentiality to the narrowest possible application. Labor accepts that there are exceptional occasions when some commercial arrangements between Government and the private sector must remain confidential.
But the stress must be on ‘exceptional occasions’.
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