Speech in Parliament– Burnside Council Inquiry
28/09/2011
The Hon. K.L. VINCENT (20:05): I rise today to place very briefly on the record my reasons for supporting this motion, and indeed the support of d4d as a party for re-opening the Burnside inquiry more generally. I am constantly flabbergasted by the continual examples of mismanagement that this government provides when attempting to deal with the Burnside council. I will not recount them one by one, because the Hon. Ann Bressington gave a thorough list of events when moving this motion.
I do, however, want to highlight the absurdity of the position that the government has left everyone in. What we have here is a council which exhibited enough evidence of inappropriate behaviour to warrant a state government investigation, and quite a lengthy one at that. Then, we have a finding from the Supreme Court confirming that it was in the public interest to conduct this investigation.
Despite these two strong indicators that the findings of the investigation would be worth hearing, the public has been cut off indefinitely from any conclusion of these issues. I understand that the current findings are not appropriate for publication, dealing as they do with some terms of reference which the Supreme Court found to be not within the appropriate scope of such an investigation, but this position where we drop the matter entirely is simply ridiculous.
The investigation into the former Burnside council was warranted and has been mandated by the Supreme Court decision. It is clear that the public deserve some answers to the questions they rightly ask about the former Burnside council. Unfortunately, despite the logical reasons to continue this investigation, minister Wortley has decided against it.
I am very supportive of having a committee established to examine the Hon. Mr Wortley’s decision, with a view that this inquiry might eventually lead to a point where we can see some real resolution of the original concerns around the Burnside council. I commend the motion to the house.
