Page 5602 - Week 13 - Thursday, 17 November 2011
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is: “I went to reassure her and PAC that no disrespect was intended by the press release.” That charge is still there.
The committee has clearly decided without having a hearing, without testing the veracity of either side of the story, without asking people directly. I ask you directly, Chief Minister: did you go down and say these words to Ms Le Couteur? Did you go down and tell the chair of the committee that she would make the new Auditor-General the nominee that the government had put forward? That is the question. It is very simple. I am surprised that you did not answer it in your submission.
I am surprised that the committee did not feel like testing it. I know that Mr Seselja wanted hearings; he told us this morning. He asked for hearings. I am surprised that Mr Corbell, the first law officer of the ACT, who apparently understands the law, and Ms Bresnan, who assures us that she is a good chair, did not think that it might be worth while testing what is in the submissions. And then, without any testing, they have accepted one submission over another and come to their conclusions, come to their findings.
It leaves a question mark over the findings, because nothing has been tested. That is not the standard we expect of this place, and that is certainly not the standard that a privilege committee should put in place. Members, if you have not read the submissions, you should read the submissions. They make for very interesting reading.
MS GALLAGHER (Molonglo—Chief Minister, Minister for Health and Minister for Industrial Relations) (5.45): I will speak briefly to this report today. I have not actually had time to read it in its entirety, as I have had other commitments today. But I certainly welcome the finding of the committee that I was not in contempt of the public accounts committee, either when I issued a press release saying who the government’s preferred nominee for the position of the Auditor-General was or when I spoke to the chair of the public accounts committee. I also welcome the committee’s findings in relation to the conversation held between the nominee for the position and the chair of the public accounts committee, Ms Le Couteur.
As yet, as I have just said, I have not had time to read the full report but I note that there are two recommendations for further action and I look forward to examining these in more detail. At first appearance, and knowing what I know now about the experience of the distress caused by the media release, they appear to be sensible and constructive.
I did take this episode extremely seriously, both in the submission to the privileges committee and in my preparedness to work with the committee on whatever way they chose to conduct their inquiry. It does seem to me that the Liberals are unable to accept the decision of the committee and it is a decision, I note, of the committee with some dissenting comments from one member of the committee. But I think we do need to acknowledge that the committee has found that no contempt occurred.
As to the issues around the media release, as I have said in this place a number of times, knowing what I know now and the flow-on effects of issuing the media release, I would have chosen to do things differently. I stand by those comments. I would not
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