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Legislative Council - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2011-07-06 Daily Xml
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BURNSIDE COUNCIL

The Hon. S.G. WADE (15:27): I have a supplementary question. Considering that the Full Court said that the terms of reference were not prepared with care and attention to their scope, is that the reason the minister cancelled the inquiry?

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order! With the supplementary question including the phrase 'is that the reason', it is asking the minister for an opinion.

The Hon. S.G. Wade: No, it is a reason for his actions.

The PRESIDENT: You can answer it if you want.

The Hon. R.P. WORTLEY (Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister for State/Local Government Relations) (15:27): He went through a few things. There are a number of reasons I have decided to do away with the inquiry. One of them is the fact that it has been going on for two years now, and to complete the report by de-stranding all those terms of reference that were made invalid could take an amount of time I could not even contemplate. Secondly, it has already cost $1.3 million—and it is a fact that the previous minister was constantly reminded of the cost of this investigation. Thirdly, there is no councillor from the previous council currently on that council.

Consider the scenario that it takes another two years and another million dollars to complete this, then they come down with the report and it is a distant memory from the original investigation. What is the value of that? In the public interest, I think the people of this state really want to move on. Burnside council deserves to be able to get on with their life. They have a new council and a new CEO. I met with the council today, and I met with the Local Government Association. We had a long discussion about this and I am looking forward to working with them into the future and looking at some of the issues that have arisen out of all this.

It would be irresponsible of me to continue on with a report that, at the end of the day, what will it mean? The possibility of any prosecutions or any findings against any person in that report, on my advice, is very unlikely, so I am not going to waste another million dollars of taxpayers' money on a report which has been ended now.

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