Dr WOODRUFF (Franklin) – Mr Speaker, the integrity failures of this Government started right at the beginning of their first term in 2014. They had only had a short period in government and they were already under the gun from the Auditor-General. The Auditor-General did a report of just one year, 2015-16, and found that of eight senior public sector appointments, three of them had conflict of-interest situations that were not declared or managed. The Integrity Commission also raised concerns about the Government’s capacity to manage conflicts of interest.
In 2016, I asked the minister for Corrections about the appointment of the Director of Prisons, Ian Thomas, who sat on a panel that employed two of his former colleagues from a private prison in Victoria for the Department of Justice.
This Government has no idea how to manage conflicts of interest. They also have no idea about what informational transparency means. They have no idea what being open and honest with Tasmanians requires. That is why right to information requests are likely to be granted less in Tasmania or returned on time than anywhere else in Australia. That is what a national comparison of Australia’s freedom of information data across states showed for the year 2020 21.
It did not take the Liberals in government very long to realise that the best way to advance the interests of businesses, which is what they are fundamentally here to do every single time, whatever the cost, is to hide the information. Far from being confident and clear with Tasmanians about what they are doing in government, far from having the confidence of their convictions, far from being clear with Tasmanians about exactly what they are doing in our name with our money, they quickly cottoned on that it is better to hide the evidence. And so, we always have right to information that is heavily redacted, if material is provided at all. Every single right to information request is a fight with a department to get out basic information that ought to be in the public domain. We have a terrible situation here.
I want to speak on behalf of the whistleblowers who are brave enough to stand up to this Government. This situation that is happening with ORI now smells very similar to some of the horrible, dirty, corrupted processes that happened at the Launceston General Hospital, when regulators and people in senior levels of the bureaucracy turned away or made people’s positions redundant, people who uncomfortably provided information in the public interest. They did not want to hear what was happening in that ward in the Launceston General Hospital. We have found it has been the case across many other government agencies. And here we have the Office of Racing Integrity, where there is no safety for whistleblowers, there is no protection against repercussions. The woman who came forward about serious animal abuses was sacked. That is what happens if you speak up in this state under a Liberal government.
The Premier had the gall to gaslight us again about his commitments to probity and integrity. I am sick to my back teeth of hearing him pretend to Tasmanians he cares about this. He had his chance and at every opportunity since he has become Premier, he has fallen at every single hurdle. We have no confidence in his abilities to stand up to bullies, he has sold away Tasmania, he has fundamentally jeopardised our AFL licence because he bent over to Gill McLachlan. He has continued to do that. He will do anything to spend Tasmanians’ money, that should be spent on hospital infrastructure and shoring us up against a climate crisis, on doing what bullies want.
He has no shame because he will not sack this minister, who has clearly demonstrated by every measure of the requirements of a minister of the Crown that she is far from capable of understanding the truth when she sees it. She would never stand up for the whistleblowers, fom the brave harness racers who have spoken out in public about the disgusting state sanctioned cheating going on in the racing industry, about the industrial-scale animal cruelty, about the potential corruption with race fixing. She is not going to do anything, because she is fundamentally there under a Liberal government to do what the industry wants.
Dr WOODRUFF (Franklin) – Mr Speaker, this Government is an integrity sinkhole. Things get brought into the light of day, good-hearted people stand up, blow the whistle on unconscionable deeds that are done in public departments and within regulators, and they go nowhere.
Four times we count that matters in the racing industry have been brought to the attention of the Office of Racing Integrity and ORI has done nothing, the minister has done nothing, and now the Premier has done nothing. Nothing is required when it is about keeping business going and it seems like the only reason you could imagine for the Government continually failing to investigate ORI and hold them to account. Sack the lot of them – that is what is required. They are obviously so dysfunctional in their role as a regulator that that is what should happen.
