Page 1487 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 10 April 2013
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MR HANSON (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (5.31): I am speaking to the amendments. I may speak later to close the debate. I would like to thank members for their contribution, in particular Mr Seselja. I think that you can always gauge the success of a speech in this place by the reaction that it generates. And based on the reaction that we got from those opposite, I think that it is fair to say that Mr Seselja might have touched on a few raw points. But it is reasonable to say that Katy Gallagher and Andrew Barr are sitting here, saying: “No, it is all tickety-boo. We have been doing our jobs as the shareholders adequately over the last”—what?—“seven years,” for the Chief Minister. Why have we got to this point that we have today? Why have we reached the point where just about everybody in the community is concerned?
In fact, this morning Mr Rattenbury described what is happening as obscene. It is obscene. But no, you can trust Katy Gallagher is doing her job, because she is telling us so. She is telling us in this Assembly: “Don’t worry. Take my word that I’m doing my job. There’s nothing to see here. You don’t want a review. You don’t want the Auditor-General, anyone independent, looking at our responsibilities and what we’re doing.” She is certainly titchy about it and playing the victim card. She does this very well.
She is trying to distance herself from what is going on in ACTEW, saying: “This is terrible. As Chief Minister, I’m just upset about what’s going on in ACTEW. This is awful. I’ll write a letter and we’ll get it all sorted out.” This is a little the same as when it all went wrong in the EDs. Remember that? Another, “It’s terrible, what happened.” What she does—and it is a clever little play—is try to distance herself as far away from the problem as she can, absolve herself of any responsibility and play the victim, and try to be the victim in the whole situation. But she is not, because when it comes to issues like this, she is their shareholder. When it came to the EDs, she was the minister. So it does not work.
Let us have this audit. Let us have a performance audit. What has the government got to hide? Mr Rattenbury was saying: “The Auditor-General is already doing something. There are all these reviews.” If the Auditor-General is already doing something, what has he got against this performance audit? Let us have the Auditor-General inquire into this matter. Let us not try to restrict her by saying: “Don’t look at this. Don’t look at what the shareholders’ responsibilities are. We don’t want to uncover that. Let’s not have a look at the largesse. Let’s not look into the salary. Let’s not look into these areas,” because God knows what the Auditor-General might uncover. “Let’s try to limit what the Auditor-General looks at.”
This is the way that this government does business. They have done it before. Whenever something like this comes up, the opposition says: “Okay, there’s a problem here. We don’t know everything that’s going wrong.” Like the onion, every layer that you peel, there is something else there. Let us get the Auditor-General to have a full performance review, performance audit, to say what is actually going on in this place. But what the government does, the same with EDs, the same with elective surgery, the same with just about any other matter, is say, “Let’s limit that review.” In
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