Page 1085 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 6 May 2014
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usually on both sides of an argument. Everyone flings a whole lot of accusations at each other. There is all sorts of unparliamentary language that gets thrown around, as you have just observed. The job that I have found myself with on the crossbench over the course of the last five or six years, formerly with my colleagues, is to try and strip all of that out and get down to what the actual facts are and try and distil from the various interpretations of it what the true story actually is.
The best of what I can make of today’s discussion, having sat here and listened to the debate, having reviewed the transcripts from earlier today, having had a conversation with both Mr Hanson and Ms Gallagher during the lunch break, is that it does seem that in the Labor Party caucus room this morning there was a tactical discussion. I imagine—because no-one would actually know this—the conversation went something like, “The report’s not going to come down because there’s not agreement.” I suspect—and this is how Mr Corbell knew this—that somebody probably observed along the lines of, “They voted for every paragraph and blocked the report in the end.” It was not until later in the day that that came out. I suspect that is probably how it went down in the course of that tactical discussion. I suspect party rooms have those conversations all the time.
We heard the commentary, as the Chief Minister made some of those observations, that that is a breach of the standing orders. I think there is a discussion to be had there because I am sure party rooms have those kinds of tactical discussions and a bit of information sharing all the time, without breaching the practices and conventions of what committees actually do, which is not to disclose the minutiae of the discussion. But, undoubtedly, parties share information about the background of things and how they have got there.
So where does that leave us? Mr Corbell has clearly come in here and used that information. In his observations he stood up and he has taken out of somewhere in his memory the discussion that went on in the tactical conversation this morning. Then it has got really messy. We have had interjections, we have had heated debate, we have had interpretations of the text. All of that has gone on, and this is where we find ourselves. So the question we now have to try and resolve is what to do about that.
I accept that Mr Corbell has not seen the minutes. I do not believe that is the case. I think he stated that very clearly and I accept his word on that. Clearly, the language that was used this morning can allude to something different. It comes down to, frankly, where one puts the commas in a sentence and probably to going back and watching Daily on Demand for a bit of tone and emphasis. “I understand from a review of the minutes that it would appear that the opposition members” et cetera. Mr Corbell certainly did not say, “I’ve read the minutes and I understand” blah, blah, blah. It is not clear who reviewed the minutes, how they were reviewed and how Mr Corbell had that information. Frankly, it is all a bit circumstantial as to what actually happened and how one interprets these things. What is important is how it is dealt with now.
Mr Corbell did come back in here and clarify that—he apologised for the fact that they were not available online. Again, I accept that on the face of it. I suspect that in the heat of the debate that is the sort of retort that various of us make at various times
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