14th of May 2024, 2:27pm
Legislative Council of Victoria | Spring Street, Melbourne
David ETTERSHANK (Western Metropolitan):
Thank you, President, and firstly, my apologies on the mix-up on the speaking order there. I did not want to interrupt Mr Galea’s repetition or some of the valuable new information that he was providing to the chamber.
Can I first of all make the point in reply to Mr Batchelor that we are not actually here to simply score points or to waste time, nor are we here to be lectured to by the government. The issue at question here, the issue at the heart of this matter, is the responsibility of the government to release documents that have been resolved by this chamber as needing to be exposed to the public light. We hear these really amazing statements – ‘It is going to cost millions of dollars and take hundreds of years to produce the documents’ – as though we were contemplating a journey to Mars rather than a bit of photocopying.
Having said that, I guess I would just like to indicate that Legalise Cannabis Victoria is very happy to have today received some undertakings from the government that strike to the release of a series of documents, including those pertaining to the public housing towers that have been mooted for demolition against the face of apparent common sense; a motion relating to kangaroos that was raised by Ms Purcell; and thirdly, documents relating to the medically supervised injecting room that are still subject potentially to government claims of privilege.
I would also indicate that we are in the process of discussing with government a procedure for shaping future documents motions. There remains a significant backlog of documents, as Ms Crozier and Mr Davis alluded to, that are yet to be addressed, and that remains an issue. But I think it is appropriate that, apart from dealing with the backlog, we also have an eye looking forward to prospective documents motions. As Nietzsche perhaps said, those who do not learn from history are destined to repeat it; so too hopefully we can learn from our experiences to date on documents, jointly with the government and the opposition, and try and develop some processes so that we do not continue to repeat this process.
In terms of Ms Crozier’s amendment, I was taught, coming up in the trade union movement, that threats repeated ad nauseam tend to have a diminishing marginal return. If you are going to punch someone in the face, do not keep on telling them you are going to punch them in the face – just punch them in the face. I need to be careful here, President. I am very mindful that you have warned me previously about fruity language, so if I may paraphrase the fruity language that is in my mind, there is an expression that talks about if one wishes to urinate, one should perhaps vacate the lavatory, and this is such a case in hand – do it or get out. I think in terms of the resolution that has been proposed, it is just a threat repeated and repeated. If it is not followed through, it means nothing, and we should move forward. Accordingly, we will not be supporting the amended motion.
Given the government’s response, what we would like to say is that the proof will be in the pudding –I seem to be dropping a lot of metaphors here at the moment. Anyway, we will be keen to see what the government delivers. There are multiple documents that should be the subject of release over coming weeks. There will be discussions about how we improve these processes in the future, and accordingly we will reflect that in our voting today. That said, we would be more than happy to return to this motion should the government fail to deliver in the spirit that has been discussed.
[Ends]
