Shadow Minister for Primary Industries & Water, Shadow Minister for Police & Emergency Services, Shadow Minister for Parks & Wildlife, Shadow Minister for Local Government

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10
Jun

Abolishment of DEPHA speech

2009

Mr HIDDING (Lyons) - Mr Speaker, the State Opposition is of a mind to support the Greens' motion. The language of the motion is appropriate. It calls into question the motivations and actions in collapsing a department in a fashion and with outcomes that we have expressed concern about.

Dr Crossley's report into Parks ought to be considered by all members of this Parliament. I will, however, place on the record that I will distance myself from some, but not all, of the remarks made by the member for Denison, Ms O'Connor, particularly those more vitriolic ones that relate to Gunns, Forestry Tasmania and trees. It does appear that she needs to get this out of her system -



Ms O'Connor - It's all part of the one story, Mr Hidding.



Mr HIDDING - before she can settle down and get to the subject matter of the motion. For all that, those views are strongly held and she is welcome to express them, but I would not want anybody reading our support for this motion believing for a minute that we give any support to the hyperbole that prefaced the principal part of the discussion.



We were completely surprised by the Government's move on this department. It was on the record by the Premier of the day that they would not know about the State's fiscal constraints until Wayne Swan tabled his Budget, but the Premier did not wait for that. Before that he decided to take the knife in some strange way, in some capricious act, something that his office has become famous for, an eleventh-floor brainstorm, cooked up by the geniuses of the Government who sat around and said, 'Let's get the big nulla-nulla out and knock this department clean out', in spite of the fact that they had a Labor mate running the place, who was a Labor-mate appointment to the head of that agency, and in spite of the fact that they had to do some fast footwork to offset the internal political pain that might come from that.



I can inform the House that the State Opposition has not and will never give up on the very nasty matter of the Scott Gadd affair and the contract, because the Tasmanian people got this immediately. They understood that this was just another example of a government that has not changed its spots a bit since the day it was elected and chose to institute throughout all levels of government a culture of fear and cronyism that, sadly, the Tasmanian people have come to expect from them. They were not that surprised about this Scott Gadd matter. People said to us wherever we went, 'We weren't surprised at that. We're horrified and disgusted, but we weren't surprised'. This was the latest example of feather-bedding and of dodgy answers to the Parliament of Tasmania, the people's House, when we asked the direct question, 'What were the circumstances that led up to this absolute scramble to give someone a five-year contract when he didn't have a job?' The people of Tasmania know what took place. We suspect that we know what took place.



Having gone through ridiculous lengths in this House - almost having to get out the waterboarding techniques of Guantanamo Bay - we have now extracted an admission from this Government that there had been discussions well before Scott Gadd signed his contract. Therefore this Government stands condemned for more of the same. Tasmanians are not accepting it and we will not accept it and we will go on with that.



Just to show that there was capricious action taken that day without any thought of what was going on - the Premier was not carrying talking points around, he did not have a set of facts in his pocket, he was too busy belting up the Leader of the Tasmanian Greens who announced something that he wanted to announce the next day. That is all that was about. He resorted to crude language he was so furious with him, but instead of setting that aside and addressing the truth about what was taking place, he went on ABC Radio and said that this would save tens of millions of dollars - 'and that's why we've got to do it'. I heard him; I was at Port Sorell at the time at a meeting. I was then asked on radio about my view, and I said, 'This is not about tens of millions of dollars, this is about wholesale sackings of people, and if it is about wholesale sackings we should know about it'. He basically agreed; he said, 'Yes, it is about wholesale sackings', but then it was not. Here is this capricious nature. They choose to do something; they announce something, then clearly something happens behind the scenes with the secretary of the department and others. Something happens in Cabinet that we cannot know about where the minister becomes aware that she no longer has a department. Here is a premier flailing around publicly claiming this is going to save tens of millions of dollars when it was going to save only $2.1 million. Tens of millions of dollars by definition is a minimum of $20 million, so from a saving of $20 million we have gone down to $2 million. That is an astonishing lapse of understanding of what he was actually up to. The Premier of this State went from $20 million to $2 million overnight. He did not know whether it was $20 million, he did not even know it was going to be $2 million, but he was out there saying it and doing it anyway. That is something that the Tasmanian people see with great horror - a government making capricious decisions on matters where it simply has no understanding of what it is up to.



It reminds me very much of the same capricious, frankly immature and childish behaviour of the Premier at the time when he made the phone call to a former police commissioner of this State and said, 'Guess what, we're going to make you commissioner again'. An act of genius. There was the Premier making a phone call to this individual, after long career in the public service as a Tasmanian born commissioner of this State, and this person gets phoned and told, 'You are the new commissioner'. He is in his office presumably measuring out where his new desk is going to go and testing whether the curtains are still all right. Then his mobile phone rings and he gets the magic phone call, 'You are the shortest serving police commissioner in the history of the world. You are no longer'. Oops. What a way for a government to operate, this eleventh floor genius that Tasmania has been subjected to.



So there we are. With no discussion at all, Environment again comes under a department that has the Resources department within it. In spite of the fact that some of my conservation movement detractors have somewhat laughingly called me 'chainsaw Hidding' in the past, though I have a long history - probably not as long as Mr Llewellyn - with the forest industry, it was the State Liberals that stood in this place and said that responsibility for the forest practices board should not be under the same minister as the minister responsible for forests. That came from us, because we were out there selling all the benefits of a sustainable forest industry, but the administrative arrangements of where things fit just did not look good, and in fact they were not. If they do not look good then they are not good; they have to look good as well as be good. You cannot open yourself up to that kind of criticism.



Mr Llewellyn - Forestry Tasmania is now independent, Rene; it wasn't originally.



Mr HIDDING - I know that, but when it was not independent and it was under the same minister as the minister responsible for forests, it was not a good look. When I said that in here you looked at me as if I was crazy. It made sense then -



Mr Llewellyn - I don't think it ever was. When was it like that?



Mr HIDDING - Trust me, because I used to put this together at the Estimates.



Mr Llewellyn - The Liberal Government you're talking about?



Mr HIDDING - No, in the Estimates arrangements the minister responsible for the forest practices board was also the minister responsible for forestry. That is what I am talking about.



Mr Llewellyn - And still is.



Mr HIDDING - And that is wrong. It should not be.



Ms O'Connor - He should not be the minister for threatened species or reserves either.



Mr HIDDING - So there is the issue. There are already three existing conditions that ought to be considered for how they appear to the rest of the world. Then you bring Environment back under the same minister -



Ms O'Byrne - It is not. We have never said that.



Mr HIDDING - Well, sorry, you are right, you bring them under the same agency with the same secretary for a department that also is the secretary for Environment - as you do for the resource industry. That to the rest of the world makes Tasmania look dodgy. I hate Tasmania looking dodgy. I am sick of Tasmania looking dodgy when we are not. If Tasmania looks dodgy because we are, basically because of the government we have, then I have got to wear that.



Mr Llewellyn - Primary industries; are you calling that a resource industry in that sense?



Mr HIDDING - Yes.



Mr Llewellyn - Because that is the only one. It is not mining or forestry or any of the other ones.



Mr HIDDING - Primary industry, for instance, is responsible for matters such as aerial spraying and -



Ms O'Connor - Land clearing.



Mr HIDDING - land clearing, all of which are intrinsically also matters for the Environment department, and they have the same secretary and in spite of the fact they have different ministers. I can understand how you are going to make it work, but do you understand what the rest of the world says when it looks at Tasmania and sees this? It just looks dodgy. If, for instance, after a long review and to save a decent amount of money you bought to us a proposition to say that in all the circumstances we think this is the best way forward for administrative arrangements for this Government now, then we would have a look at it and would probably support it, but you did not. A capricious act from the eleventh floor, overnight, is going to save tens of millions. But no, it is only going to save $2 million, so something else is going on. What certainly was not in your mind was how this looks to the rest of the world. That was the last thing on your mind.



Minister O'Byrne is about to get to her feet and defend the indefensible. She knows where she would want her department to be - nowhere near Primary Industries. We are happy to support this motion.