Hansard debates

Mrs McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (13:08): I would like to raise a couple of points relating to Alert Digest No. 3 of the Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee (SARC) report, and specifically I raise the issue of ministerial correspondence with the committee, which I had reason to raise at an earlier sitting. It is good to note from the digest that we have now had some long-overdue responses. The Treasurer wins the prize with an 11-month delay, followed by the Premier at six months and four months. I understand the Minister for Health may now have responded to a five-month delayed request due for tabling in the committee’s next digest. Of course I am sure this flurry of replies is unrelated to the matter being raised on the floor of this house recently or the notice of motion I put down last month.

But in all seriousness it is good to at least have these replies, and in that respect I am grateful to the Attorney-General for expediting her response on the Change or Suppression (Conversion) Practices Prohibition Bill 2020, which seems to have begun this avalanche. At least she can honestly date a letter. As eagle-eyed members will notice, in the footnotes to appendix 3 of Alert Digest No. 3 the Treasurer’s response to the committee’s letter on the North East Link Act 2020 from March 2020 was dated 27 April 2020 but not in fact received until 4 February 2021. Similarly, the Premier’s response to SARC’s 2 June letter on the COVID-19 Omnibus (Emergency Measures) Act 2020 dated 29 June 2020 was not received until 9 February 2021. Did they get lost in the post? The Premier and Treasurer might have scant regard for the deliberations of this Parliament, but surely it cannot have taken eight and 10 months respectively to work out how to get a letter over here. I will leave members to draw their own conclusions as to what this mysterious misdating says about the values of the Premier’s and Treasurer’s offices, to say nothing of the delay in the first place.

Now, without wishing to seem ungrateful, I need to raise another point. As the notice of motion I mention stated, the committee’s correspondence with ministers— (Time expired)

Motion agreed to.