Minister For State/Local Government Relations
28/07/2011
The Hon. K.L. VINCENT (15:03): As many members are already aware, I will be abstaining from the vote today. However, I will be adding my vote to allow the vote to go ahead, obviously. I am obviously someone who believes wholeheartedly in the power of a vote and therefore not someone who takes their decision to abstain lightly. I hope very, very much that this will be one of the very few occasions, if not the only occasion, where I make this decision, so I would like to take a moment to clarify why I have come to this decision today.
I believe, of course, that there are several motivations for this motion, only one of which is the mess that has been made of the Burnside inquiry. I wholly believe that what has happened with the Burnside inquiry is not right, and I will be supporting all direct parliamentary action which seeks to rectify that. Any motion which comes before this council which looks into the scrapping of this inquiry will have my support.
Of course, the decision on Burnside was made by Mr Wortley himself, but I am not convinced that a motion of no-confidence in him will reverse or make any real difference to that decision. What this motion is really about is attacking the Hon. Mr Wortley and the government, not helping the people of Burnside to see a good outcome. It is about the Liberals trying to get one up on Labor, not about what is right for the people of this state.
While I am comfortable with attacking the government and its ministers when they do something wrong—in fact, it forms a large part of my job—I am not comfortable attacking them when there is not a useful outcome from that attack. I will attack when I think we can get a better outcome for South Australians. I will do that in the future and I have done it in the past. But, to be honest, I know that we need at least two ministers in this house, and if Mr Wortley does not take the place of that second minister I do not know who will do a better job.
Members interjecting:
The Hon. K.L. VINCENT: Let me continue please. If we shame Mr Wortley out of this position, who will give it and us a better performance? I personally do not think anyone in this house will, and that is a sad reflection on the lack of faith I and many people in this state have in this government. It is, I believe, an opinion which many, if not most, South Australians presently share.
Mr Wortley is not doing a good job now. He needs to do a better job in the future. The government needs to put more supports and resources toward taking its role in the upper house more seriously. This is, after all, the house of review, so I am happy for any measures to be taken for the government’s processes to be reviewed so that we in the house of review may do a better job of serving South Australia effectively.
It would be easy for me to support this motion, but that would be playing media politics and ignoring the real complications of this motion. I do not want to use my vote to make people like me; I want to use my vote to make a really beneficial difference for the people of South Australia. Voting for this motion would leave the government scrambling to make their ministers in this place effective, and that is not good for our state.
Voting against it would tell the government that the shabby job it is doing is good enough, and it is not good enough for our state. Therefore, my only option is to abstain. I will leave old tactics to the old parties. I am using my abstention to highlight not so much my lack of faith in the Hon. Mr Wortley but my lack of confidence in this government as a whole.
