Parliamentary Procedure

Standing Orders Suspension

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS (West Torrens) (11:06): I move:

That standing orders be and remain so far suspended as to enable me to move for the establishment of a privileges committee forthwith.

The SPEAKER: An absolute majority not being present, please ring the bells.

An absolute majority of the whole number of members being present:

The SPEAKER: An absolute majority being present, I accept the motion. Member for West Torrens, do you wish to speak?

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS (West Torrens) (11:09): Yes, sir, I do. Sir, I note that in your ruling you did not say there was a prima facie case that the Premier misled the parliament. I believe the chronology of what occurred over the last two days shows that the Premier deliberately and intentionally attempted to interfere with the deliberations of this house.

Sir, you tabled the ICAC report given to you on 29 November at your first opportunity at the commencement of parliament on Tuesday 3 December. That day, 45 minutes later, the government held a press conference where the minister awkwardly marched out of the Royal Adelaide Hospital with senior health executives, without Dr McGowan, and announced a response or a task force to contemplate the ICAC report you, sir, had tabled. Later on in that question time, the Premier was asked a question, to which he responded:

Yes, the Leader of the Opposition is right. This is the largest public sector agency, and we thank the commissioner for the report, which was delivered to the government last week, which has now been tabled in parliament and available for all to read.

This is the important part is:

I myself am about two-thirds of the way through this report.

The following day, in response to questions from the Leader of the Opposition about the government's response and its handling of this matter, the Premier told the parliament this:

We had ample time to read the report. It was only about 60 pages, plus appendices. I read the report and formed the opinion that the best way to inform the government to take action on the contents of the report was to establish the interagency task force—

The parliament was told on Tuesday by press release at 11.45 that an interagency response had been established, but a few hours later the Premier told the parliament he had not even read the report. The next day he tells the parliament, 'Before I announce the interagency report, I have read the report.' No, he did not.

An honourable member: They both can't be true.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: They both can't be true. The parliament has been misled. We need to have a privileges committee to call the Premier before the bar and ask him questions, to call the officers in this agency to find out who knew what when, because both statements cannot stand, let alone the learned legal opinion of the Attorney-General, who handed out the report and told everyone they could not read it, and then afterwards said, 'Actually, you could read it, so I'm sorry I told you you couldn’t read it.' So, yes, we will leave that legal opinion to one side.

Mr Brown: Just put that to one side.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Put that to one side. What we have here is the parliament being told two completely different things about the same topic. That is a clear definition, and McGee speaks very clearly of impeding the operation of the house. The operation of the house in good order is that the parliament is given accurate information. We cannot conduct ourselves as an opposition if the information we are given is inaccurate.

If we are told that an inquiry was established on the basis of an ICAC report, we should be able to believe that, but we cannot believe it when the Premier and the health minister told both chambers, almost at the same time, that they had not read it. Then we are told the next day that 'we had ample time'.

Sir, on the justification you gave—and this is in no way a reflection on your ruling; you are entitled to make the ruling and the opposition makes no reflection on that whatsoever—you claimed 'we' meant the government as a collective. Well, the Premier and the health minister had not read the report, and if the Premier and the health minister are not running the health agency and the government, who is?

There is the idea that we can somehow have the Premier say on Tuesday that he had not read the report and on Wednesday say, 'No, no, no. I read the report; it's not very long. I had ample time at 11.45 to announce it.' We had the health minister on the radio saying that it went to cabinet and the Premier telling us here that it was not a cabinet deliberation.

Mr Malinauskas: It's a farce.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: It is a farce and a shambles. The only way to sort this out is to have an inquiry. The parliament cannot be misled. I know some members opposite do not like the Premier being humiliated in this way—

Dr Close: Some do.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Some might. I noticed a very interesting photograph this morning of two very senior, prominent right-wing MPs standing behind the Premier, looking at him in a certain way. It was not affection, I can say. I have seen that look. I have to say, I had to abstain from looking at him any longer. I had to abstain from looking any longer.

An honourable member interjecting:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Trust me, I take all your instructions very seriously, and the Premier should, too. Back to the matter at hand, the opposition is asking the parliament to suspend standing orders so that we can move a motion to establish a privileges committee. I understand that members opposite do not want to debate a privileges committee. They may not want to support it, but let's let the house decide it.

Let's have the suspension, let's move the privileges committee, let's have the debate because we cannot have the Premier in two days telling us two different things about the same topic. It just cannot work—you cannot have the good functioning of parliament. What occurs next, because the opposition has the Hansard of both days, with the two answers to the same question that contradict each other, is that it creates bad order in the house. It creates interjections. It creates—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The Minister for Transport is called to order.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The member for West Torrens is entitled to be heard, and the government will have a speaker shortly.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! Settle, member for Heysen.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Thank you, sir. Given the Premier did not read the report and announced the committee, announced an inquiry, and given his health minister did not do it, I think a prima facie case exists that this parliament was misled—and misled deliberately. The reason we were misled deliberately was to try to inhibit the opposition's inquiries into the conduct of the government, which is what question time is for.

We believe it fulfils the test that McGee sets. We believe it fulfils the test that the parliament demands; that is, all answers given to this place must be honest and truthful. If they are not, there are consequences no matter who you are. Whether you are a witness to a committee, whether you are the Premier or a lowly backbencher, whoever you are this parliament is supreme, and nothing and no-one should come here and ever mislead this parliament.

The Premier has to answer for his inaccurate statements. He does not even have the courtesy to come into the parliament and make a correction so that there is no misunderstanding. The arrogance is growing by the day: the contempt for the procedures of this parliament, the contempt for the procedures and the committees of this parliament. We are now having public servants mislead parliamentary inquiries. We are having public servants now making up excuses or not even turning up to parliamentary inquiries.

The House of Assembly has higher standards. The House of Assembly will not let anyone mislead it. We cannot have the Premier tell us all on one day that he had not read the report, and the next day that he had, before he ordered an inquiry into SA Health. It is clear from his own words that none of that is true. It is important that we ask the Premier questions.

It is important that we empower the Serjeant-at-Arms to go through and check the Premier's diary, to check when he was given the report and to ask the questions that we need to get the information. We need to call for documents to go through this forensically because the Premier cannot mislead the people's house. The people's house, elected every four years, elects the government. It is a solemn duty that we have in this parliament, and we cannot have our leaders in this chamber mislead the people of this state. It cannot be allowed to occur.

I ask members opposite: at least let us have the debate. At least let us move the motion. Agree to the suspension and let the parliament debate this matter so that we can argue whether or not we should have a privileges committee into the conduct of a Premier who lied to the parliament.

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER (Morialta—Minister for Education) (11:19): The member for West Torrens has sought to suspend standing orders, as is his right, to move a motion to establish a privileges committee, and he has laid out the case as best he can as to why that should take place. I am unconvinced, and I imagine that the government members who stand with me are utterly unconvinced, by what he has said.

The failure of the Leader of Opposition Business to successfully lay out a case as to how the Premier allegedly has misled the parliament is why this house should not suspend standing orders to give precedence to a privileges committee and why no case has been made for the establishment of a privileges committee. To say that somebody had read two-thirds of a report on one day and the next day had read the report is actually not inconsistent. To form a view that a task force should be established—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order, members on my left!

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER: —to announce that a task force should be established, to complete reading a report and to confirm one's view that a task force should be established, to then write to the task force members or to establish the task force formally is a chain of events that is entirely logical, especially when as soon as this government came to office we were presented with information that, indeed, was apparent to many people for a number of years—that there were problems in SA Health.

The Leader of the Opposition, having been the minister, admittedly, as he said yesterday, for only five months, and therefore not responsible for them, should have been aware of the problems in SA Health and should have established a task force then; but he did not, despite five months as minister for health and either not knowing the problems in the health system or not being interested.

The shadow minister for health, as an adviser in the minister for health's office—I think he was even chief of staff in a former minister for health's office during the period when a number of things raised in the ICAC commissioner's report were raised—should have known that many of these issues were at stake and yet did nothing, and yet sat on his hands, and yet supported Transforming Health—two words that no-one opposite has the courage to even say in the same sentence anymore.

The problems in the health system have been significant, and we were advised of that for some time. There was a report being prepared. There was a very strong level of confidence that a task force or something of that nature would be relevant and would be useful to help us inform the government's full response to the ICAC report, and that is logical—announcing and having it clear that this is logical, it having been likely even before the report came in. Announcing that that would be the case, completing the reading of the report (60-something pages read through a day; not over several weeks as other reports have been read by other ministers, but over the course of a day) and be confirmed in a view, was clearly the right course of events and exactly the appropriate thing to do. It is exactly what the Premier has done.

This government has acted in accordance with logic, and this government has been open and transparent with the house releasing it on Tuesday so that all could read it. I would encourage those opposite to read those 60 pages because there is a lot of information about what was happening in SA Health and the health system over the course of the time when the Leader of the Opposition was the minister for health and when the member for Kaurna, the shadow minister for health, was a senior political officer in the health minister's office.

It would make chilling reading for some of those on the opposite benches who express their confidence in their leader, who express their confidence in the shadow minister for health—the architects of so many of the failures in South Australia's health system. They are the people who closed the Repat, the people who left Noarlunga Hospital without overnight care. It took this government, this Minister for Health, this Premier, this member for Davenport, this member for Waite and our other southern suburbs members to announce that it was being restored this morning because we actually care about improving the health system.

While those opposite are focused on their sideshow, on their stunts, on their suspensions of standing orders and their hopeless positioning of themselves in relation to health, they cling on to the fact that there was an ICAC report. They ignore the fact that most of the detail is actually critical of their time in office, and they focus on the fig leaf covering their shame, for their horrific atrocities on the South Australian health system. There is no case that has successfully been made for a privileges committee to be laid and there is no case that has been successfully made as to why standing orders should be suspended. We have other business to get on with—let's get on with it.

An honourable member: Fig leaves covering their shame.

The SPEAKER: Yes, we heard the comment about the fig leaf, minister.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: I already did.

Motion negatived.