Page 5580 - Week 13 - Thursday, 17 November 2011
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General. If that is something that members of this place think is important then I suggest they make changes to the act that would reflect that. There is no requirement for particular qualifications, Mr Smyth, and we have been through this in the private briefing.
The candidate selected and nominated by the government met all the requirements for the position. An extremely highly qualified, professional, career public servant has moved into that job, supported by the majority of the public accounts committee members. It is simply a campaign that has gone one step too far. I was your target. The privileges committee was your process. The privileges committee has not given you the outcome you wanted, so what do you do now? You escalate it into something completely unrelated and seek to demean and bully the position of the Auditor-General. The opposition are prepared to demean and identify senior public servants in an attempt to politically attack the government.
We have seen you do it to care and protection workers and we have seen you do it to chief executives. This week we have had other examples of questioning the veracity and independence of the Government Solicitor. Every time you want to get to the executive you are prepared to pull down people in your way. It is a failure of leadership from Mr Seselja to actually allow his deputy to bring this disallowance motion to this place today. It is clear that Mr Seselja has no control over Mr Smyth and his antics as he is prepared to allow this kind of behaviour to go on and to move a disallowance of this nature.
This disallowance is an important one, in the sense that, to my understanding, it has never been sought to be done before. As I said, the target of your political campaign is me. You have sought to prosecute that argument through various channels—and I am able to defend myself through those channels. But this is not about privileges not giving you the outcome that you wanted, that you desired. This is actually about the appointment of the Auditor-General. The claims that you make around the selection process being flawed and the lack of appropriate qualifications are incorrect. There was a very thorough process undertaken. We have an extremely highly qualified public servant who was moved into that position. That person needs to be allowed to complete their job without you seeking to attack me and thereby trample on the Auditor-General in the process.
This is a completely separate matter to the issuing of a media release, which has been considered thoroughly by a committee of this place. This is just Mr Smyth going one step too far and allowing this to sit on the notice paper. Frankly, the length of time you have allowed it to sit on the notice paper shows exactly what political mileage you have sought to get. This is a political activity. It is aimed at me. You are prepared to bring anyone down in your quest.
Mr Smyth interjecting—
MS GALLAGHER: That is exactly what you are doing, and you need to be called on it. We need to protect individuals that do not have a right to defend themselves in this place when they have their reputations besmirched, when it is clear that the opposition, the would-be alternative government, want to behave in this way and are prepared to
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