Mr BAYLEY (Clark) – Honourable Speaker, the Greens support the suspension of Standing Orders and having this debate. I will talk to both the amendment and the substantive motion at once, if that’s okay, in the interest of time, noting the Opposition Leader’s commitment to this and acceptance of effectively the gag amendment, then we’re willing to go along with that as well. It’s not normal business, we would normally prefer to have a lengthier debate and give all members – there are seven members of Bass in here who might want to have a say about this motion, but we will follow the Opposition Leader’s lead and support this amendment. I will also say that we do think there is a case to answer here, so we do want to have this debate.
I was at the table with the minister, next to Mr Winter, when he was answering these questions, and I have to say, I was shocked. I was shocked by the questions, and I was also shocked by the response. Not just the verbal response that we can read in the Hansard now because I also want to say that the response was arrogant, dismissive and punitive. That was demonstrated as well in the body language of the minister at the table that day. I want to draw a connection to the punitive nature of this response. This is not how we should be doing politics in this state and the code of conduct for ministers is really important. Mr Winter raised that at the table. A stakeholder standing with the alternative government to endorse their approach, shouldn’t mean that the offer put on the table by the other alternative government gets pulled. It’s not the way we should be doing things here. It’s not good faith and it’s not good practice.
This is not good practice, full stop. Ms Rosol will rise to speak to this for us, but this is pork-barrelling, this is the kind of thing that the Integrity Commission called ‘indirect electoral bribery.’ This, full stop is not the way we should be doing sports funding in this state. We should have a bucket of money, and we should have an arms length process where all clubs have the opportunity to apply and there is an independent, transparent process that makes the decision. That is the Greens position on how this should happen, but putting that to the side, offering a letter, dangling that in front of a club, then, effectively, withdrawing it because a club stood next to the competition, in an electoral sense, is very poor practice, and as a result we want to see this debate happen.
We welcome the commitment from the Opposition Leader. We know we have really important business to get on with today. It is the last day and everyone’s a little bit tetchy, but we do believe this is an important debate to have, because we do need to draw a line around these kinds of behaviours and call it out as being unacceptable. Ms Rosol will lead the debate for us when we get to the substantive motion, but we certainly support the suspension of Standing Orders, so that we can have the debate.
