Ms ROSOL (Bass) – Honourable Speaker, I rise to speak on behalf of the Greens to this censure motion against the Minister for Sport in relation to his actions around funding for North Launceston Football Club. As a member for Bass, I have an interest in this because it relates to a football club in my electorate, the North Launceston Football Association, who have a long history at York Park, having been there for over 100 years. I understand from speaking to the president last week that they actually built the western stand at the stadium which has now been demolished as part of the redevelopment work, and they find themselves in the difficult position of having been forgotten and excluded from the plans for the redevelopment, and without a home, which is a pretty terrible situation for them.
The actions under question in this censure motion are broader than just the implications for the North Launceston Football Association. They go to process, fairness and integrity and the actions of a minister in the fulfilment of their duty. That’s what this is about. This is about actions, not just words. The minister is trying to make this about words in the apology he’s written, but this is about the actions he took during the election campaign, and the apology that he’s given doesn’t apologise for those actions, it apologises for the words he said. He hasn’t apologised for what he did or for the wrongness of it.
The minister made an election commitment to the North Launceston Football Association. When the president of association later appeared with Labor around their commitment to the club in media, the minister then withdrew his offer of funding to the club.
The Greens don’t support this kind of election promise. It’s pork-barrelling and not the best way to allocate public funds. There are many well-deserving organisations who have valid needs and a right to funding. This circumstance illustrates the problems with pork-barrelling, the weaknesses in the process, or complete lack of process, or the complete lack of process on many occasions, and the potential for misuse and abuse. Pork barrelling is a terrible way to meet valid community need.
The Greens have a policy to provide for independently assessed community infrastructure grants that would end pork-barrelling. The North Launceston Football Association’s needs are valid and they deserve support. They’ve lost their home and they have been excluded from that process. We should be looking for ways to support them but there are better ways of doing that.
This club hasn’t done anything wrong. They’ve been forgotten in the redevelopment of York Park Stadium and they’re doing what they can to ensure they have a home going forward. They had two offers before them in an election campaign and they worked with both those offers. Why wouldn’t they? They had no idea who would win the election at that point so, of course, they did all they could to secure their future. They weren’t making a choice between one party over another; they were just working across both sides of things, trying to make sure their future was secure in some form, regardless of who was elected.
What we have here is a minister who engaged in pork-barrelling and then, when he saw that the club had been to Labor and they’d made similar promises to them, the minister withdrew his offer. That’s vindictive. It’s a punishment of the North Launceston Football Association for talking with another political party and accepting an offer from them.
Either the minister thinks the North Launceston Football Association deserves support to get a home or he doesn’t think they deserve it. You can’t shift positions like that. To do that is disrespectful and it’s political game-playing. The people of the North Launceston Football Association deserve far better than that. They deserve respect and they deserve to be treated fairly in a process.
I turn now to the minister’s response since his actions have been exposed and called out. The minister has been incredibly slow to respond, and when he has responded, he’s repeatedly said he is committed to the North Launceston Football Association. But that doesn’t excuse or wipe away his actions in any way. If anything, it minimises the seriousness of what he did. It’s a way of him saying, ‘Well, it’s okay, I did this terrible thing over here – or said these terrible things because I haven’t actually admitted I did a terrible thing, but I really support this club. I really want good things for them.’ There’s no excuse in that.
The minister has apologised but he has only apologised for his words, not for his actions. I will read from the letter that the Minister for Sport sent to all members of parliament yesterday. He wrote, ‘On reflection, this was a terrible choice of words and for this I apologise.’ Then he goes on to provide all the excuses for what he did. But at no point in the letter does he apologise for what he did. That’s not a proper apology. The minister’s actions lacked procedural fairness and all we have read and heard from the minister has been excuses, wriggling around, quibbling over the meaning of what he said but not apologising for what he did. And what he did was wrong on so many levels: pork-barrelling, poor process, vindictive removing of the offer, failing to grasp the seriousness of his actions, slowness to respond and a poor apology that does not go far enough. For that reason, the Greens support this censure motion. The minister’s actions do not fit with the standards required of ministers of the Crown.
In a couple of places, the wording of the motion is unclear and a bit difficult to understand, but we understand the heart of this motion and still support it. Clause 10, in particular, says, ‘Ensure the minister can never repeat this egregious conduct.’ I’m not sure if, as a House of Parliament, we can do that. I’m not sure if we can ensure the minister never repeats this egregious conduct. It would be good if we could. We have a Westminster system of parliament that, hopefully, means ministers do the right thing. It would be good if there was good leadership, if Cabinet would work together to ensure ministers do their jobs properly and act appropriately. It would be good if there was culture change. Culture change would be helpful. Perhaps ending pork-barrelling would be a way of ensuring the minister can never repeat something like this, and no other minister could do something like this in the future. But we, as a House, can’t ensure the minister does that.
We’re not going to amend the motion to tighten that up. I believe it would be impossible for us to find some wording that would allow the House to do that.
In relation to the final clause, where the motion calls on the government to reinstate the funding commitment to the club as promised, I come back to the issue with pork‑barrelling. I note that Labor also has a policy to end pork‑barrelling. The Greens are very open to working with you in this parliament, where we have an opportunity to create change, to take the action and create the legislation needed to end pork‑barrelling, because, ultimately, that’s what’s led to this situation. This is an opportunity for change: an opportunity for change for the minister, but also an opportunity for change for all of us in the way we do things at election times.
