Page 36 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 25 February 2014
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all over the appointment of the director and the Fringe Festival itself, is that it is therefore reasonable to expect that she had some form of ministerial oversight over the events which took place there. It is reasonable to expect that.
If she is going to make decisions and, in effect, use discretionary money to make appointments based on her personal opinion, it is right and proper for us to scrutinise the minister, and it is right and proper for her to be across her brief and to be across where each of those dollars is going.
This is not about censorship. Censorship would be to go and stop someone doing something somewhere else. That is not what this is about. This is about whether taxpayers’ dollars were appropriately expended and whether the minister, who personally authorised the expenditure, was across what she was spending the money on. There is quite a serious distinction between censorship and using public money to pay for something. They require totally different levels of scrutiny. We are not advocating for censorship here. We are advocating for some sort of scrutiny from the minister.
It goes back to my earlier point, that this minister is not capable of running her department. She is not capable of running her office. She is not capable, I am sure, of taking a brief to cabinet. Therefore, is it any surprise that these issues keep happening? It will happen again. In a month, three months or six months’ time, we will be in here asking questions again about another cock-up, another error, another lack of ministerial oversight, because the core issue here is a lack of judgement.
We have the care and protection issues, the handing out of Labor Club membership forms to kids at Campbell high, the Twitter debacle and the implausible excuse she gave afterwards, the Fringe Festival debacle and all the other issues. But by far and away I believe the biggest issue is her inability to manage her directorate and her office on a day-to-day basis.
Who knows what other problems are occurring on a day-to-day basis that we do not know about? Who knows what other issues her staff constantly have to patch up? Who knows how often and how severe are the situations which she causes which could create an extremely undesirable situation either for the taxpayer or for individuals for whom her decisions take effect?
This is a very serious issue. I do sympathise with the Chief Minister, because she has got a tough decision when it comes to appointing cabinet ministers. I think that actually appointing Minister Rattenbury was a blessing in disguise. It was a blessing in disguise for her because it meant that at least you have someone who is across his brief as Minister for Territory and Municipal Services and the other portfolios.
Whether we disagree with him or not, we would not disagree that he is across his brief. It is the same for other ministers here, except for Ms Burch. It is that inability to undertake core ministerial work which we think leaves this government, and in turn all ACT citizens, vulnerable to bad decisions.
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