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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, First Session (53-1)
2014-06-05 Daily Xml
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Grievance Debate

HomeStart Finance

The Hon. I.F. EVANS (Davenport) (15:05): Over the past two days in question time, I have raised questions about the government's work being undertaken in scoping HomeStart Finance for sale. Yesterday, I asked the Treasurer a supplementary question, and that was: 'was Project A the scoping of the sale of HomeStart Finance, and has the government scoped HomeStart Finance for sale?' In response to that question, the minister answered, 'Sir, I have not seen anything that would suggest that we have…' So, the Treasurer—

The Hon. A. Koutsantonis: And I will go back and check.

The Hon. I.F. EVANS: —and he will go back and check. We have had 24 hours for the Treasurer to go back and check, and it is not hard to go back and check. The freedom of information document that was released to the opposition, not only two days before the election but again yesterday by the Department of Treasury, makes it crystal clear that there was a cabinet document going to cabinet on 18 June 2013.

There was a covering minute to the Treasurer: 'HomeStart Finance: review of the loan book—cabinet submission'. Included in that were the Deloitte valuation report, the Deloitte preliminary scoping report, a cabinet costing document and speaking notes prepared to the minister to address parliament.

They were not scoping it to run a raffle. What other purpose would you be scoping HomeStart Finance for if not looking at sale? This is not a question today of whether or not the minister told the house they were going to sell it: this is a matter of the minister telling the house he had no knowledge.

This was the minister who just happened to be, on 18 June 2013, the very minister in charge of HomeStart Finance. One would have thought it is a reasonable assumption that, if HomeStart Finance is being scoped for whatever purpose—scoped for sale, in my view—the minister responsible would have been aware of that. Is the now Treasurer saying that the then treasurer (now Premier) scoped HomeStart Finance and just did not tell the minister responsible? I don't think so.

Maybe the divisions in the government are so bad that did happen. Maybe the left wing of the Labor Party and the right wing of the Labor Party are so divided the Premier and the Treasurer did not talk about the scoping of HomeStart Finance; let him come in and say that. The other version of events might be that he just did not receive that set of cabinet documents. Of all the cabinet documents that are sent through to the minister's office, he just did not receive those on 18 June that referred to the scoping study undertaken by Deloitte.

There is another reason, and this was used by the government before. The Hon. John Hill used this in an answer, when we had him on a privilege matter. There is another answer; that is, he received the documents but just did not read them. That is actually a defence used by the former minister for the environment, John Hill: that he received the document but just did not actually read it.

There is a very simple answer to this. The Treasurer can come in and tell the house: did he have the document, did he read it and therefore have knowledge? I do not believe for one second that a cabinet submission can go to every cabinet minister about scoping of HomeStart Finance, the minister for HomeStart sits there and looks at the cabinet agenda and says, 'Oh, look at that. They are scoping HomeStart Finance. I won't read that.' I just do not accept that as an argument. I think it is crystal clear that the Treasurer does have knowledge of it through his involvement in the former ministry.

The other issue I want to touch on is the Ombudsman's report into the Freedom of Information issue, and this goes to the politicisation of the Public Service. The Ombudsman has identified that FOI officers have identified that they are put under pressure not to release documents that are embarrassing to the government, and the government is going to sit there and say that they are not going to investigate it. Why? It is to the government's political advantage.

Can you imagine if the Ombudsman reported that the FOI office was releasing more documents than necessary because they were an advantage to the opposition? You would have people swarming through the agencies making sure they applied to the act. There is a responsible action to be taken by the government here. They can set up any independent inquiry they want with any powers they want.

Time expired.

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