Page 5575 - Week 13 - Thursday, 17 November 2011
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then followed in the public accounts committee and the concerns that were raised in the public accounts committee.
For 22 years this Assembly has had a process that has allowed the selection of the Auditor-General without any fuss attached to it. I have participated in a number of those. What changed? What changed is the actions of a Chief Minister, who acted impetuously without thinking about the consequences of her actions, and then exacerbated those actions by the way she attempted to address what had been done.
Madam Assistant Speaker, as you are well aware, the public accounts committee was reported in the Canberra Times as being “miffed”, which I think is a polite presentation. But I refer to the letter from the committee to the Chief Minister where it says:
Secondly, I refer to your media release—“New Auditor-General for ACT”—issued today, Tuesday 31 May 2011. The Committee is of the view that it would have been courteous for you to have waited until its views had been received, in accordance with the Auditor-General Act 1996, prior to making a public announcement. Furthermore, the Committee notes there is also a discourtesy to the proposed nominee as it has yet to consider and provide its view in accordance with the Auditor-General Act 1996.
Madam Assistant Speaker, this is part of the problem. We had a process that used to work very well. I am not aware of any nominee to a statutory appointment ever being leaked in 22 years of that process—never. The process allowed committees to conduct their business in privacy—not in secret, but in privacy—and it protected all nominees in the event that they were rejected by the committee or concerns were raised. Because we were able to do it privately—not secretly, I say again—people were able to put their names forward without having the embarrassment of being rejected by a committee or by the Assembly. Because of the movement away from the process that has worked so well and served this community so well for 22 years by this Chief Minister, we find ourselves here today.
It is well known to all, given some of the previous discussions that we have had, that some of the things that occurred in the public accounts committee, some of the meetings had and some of the words that were said to various individuals led me to seek precedence and to be granted precedence by this place to set up a privileges committee to investigate the actions of the Chief Minister. That is a pretty serious thing to happen to a Chief Minister. The report presented this morning is interesting. It makes no significant findings, and we will get back to the discussion of that report later—
Ms Gallagher: No, it does. It makes some significant findings.
MR SMYTH: Well, it does not make significant findings. What it says is: “With the evidence before us, we make this finding.” What happened, though, was the committee did not go and seek additional evidence, even though a number of members had said they would like to appear and put their case. There is particularly the glaring case of the conflicting evidence about whether or not the committee was pressured, and it is very pertinent to refresh the minds of members about that.
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