Page 1850 - Week 06 - Thursday, 5 June 2014
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MADAM SPEAKER: The question before the Assembly is that the debate be adjourned.
Question resolved in the negative.
MADAM SPEAKER: The question now is that the report be adopted.
MR SMYTH (Brindabella) (12.13): I will speak to the motion. Normally I am on the administration and procedure committee, but because I was named by Mr Gardner as somebody whose comments he who took offence to I have not read this. This has just landed on my desk and Mr Rattenbury has moved was that the report be adopted.
If this is adopted, this goes into Hansard. I would assume that, except for the four members of the admin and procedure committee, nobody in this place has actually read it. Yet you blithely now want to adopt the report and put in Hansard something that, apart from the four committee members, no-one else has had the opportunity to read.
The notion that this is somehow routine is ridiculous. In all the time I have been here, I think there have only been two or three of these things come to the Assembly. Recommendation 1 states:
The committee recommends that a response from Mr Jorian Gardner, in the terms specified in Appendix A, be incorporated in Hansard.
That is what you are voting for. If you adopt this report, it goes into Hansard. I would have thought that people should have had time to at least have a read rather than just rubberstamp it. Bring it back on on the next sitting day. I would have thought that was logical, but if people want to go ahead without reading documents and approving them for inclusion in Hansard, which is a serious matter, then go right ahead. But you are setting a new low standard for administration in this place.
MR HANSON (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (12.15): Madam Speaker, I support everything that Mr Smyth has just said. I think it is unfortunate that this is happening without a chance for members who are named to have a chance to look at the document in some detail. I have had a chance to skim it, to have a look.
What I will say, and I want this on the record, is that I stand by my comments. I stand by everything those other members have said that are named in this document, that being Mr Smyth and Mrs Jones. I stand by the Liberal Party’s position on this, which is in essence that the process around the appointment was flawed. There was a real problem with that process. That has been litigated in this place before but I stand by that.
I also stand by my comments, and those made by others in this place, that it was highly inappropriate for the government to fund an event that included Nazi strippers at the opening of the Fringe Festival.
Mr Corbell: Point of order, Madam Speaker.
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