McCully Murray: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
McCully Murray: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:632;Page:4141] 
Hon MURRAY McCULLY (National—East Coast Bays) 
: 
 I was one of those who served on the Finance and Expenditure Committee which heard the estimate from the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and I was present when my colleague Dr Lockwood Smith asked the head of the department Mr Wevers about the report that has been released today. Dr Cullen no doubt thinks that he is being enormously clever dancing around on the head of a pin and I simply say to him that grave questions have been raised in relation to the report. If he wants to make light of them that is his call but I can assure him that is not the approach members of the public will take and it does him no credit. 
I ask whether officials from the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet have reflected any credit on themselves in this exercise and whether Dr Ingram was in fact wise to have proceeded in the face of the obstacles that the report correctly identifies. In the select committee I was staggered when my colleague Dr Smith asked Mr Wevers what was happening with the report and how much money it had cost taxpayers to date and he said that he did not know. Well I suppose that is an act of sloppiness to some extent but when Dr Smith asked the next obvious question as to whether Mr Wevers could find out and tell the select committee by way of a note Mr Wevers would not say yes to that.  
 I want to record in this debate that that is not a good enough standard of compliance and accountability for the head of a major department of State. Mr Wevers knew precisely what was going on in relation to the inquiry. He was responsible for superintending the activities of Dr Ingram and ensuring the bills were paid. Asked a straight-out question by Dr Lockwood Smith not only did he not know the answer but also he gave no indication that he was prepared to get that answer. I say to Mr Wevers that that is not good enough. It is not good enough when the Finance and Expenditure Committee which superintends this estimate asked him a straight question to which he could have supplied a straight answer. 
But today we know why Mr Wevers was wriggling around on a hook and why Dr Ingram has been so slow with his report. It is because members of the public and members of the House wanted answers to some straight questions and Dr Ingram could not answer them. Dr Ingram came back with a report to the Prime Minister that said he did not know the answers in respect of the truly large questions that had been posed. I feel some sympathy for Dr Ingram because I guess he felt that as a man who had taken on a job he needed to try to see it through. But I am bound to say having seen the report—and I have had a quick look at it today—that I think that was the wrong call. 
I think Dr Ingram like Mr Wevers fell short of his obligations in this respect and that on balance—Dr Ingram might even agree with this himself—he probably should have said that if the witnesses would not talk and the Government would not do the things that would make the witnesses feel able to talk then he could not produce a report he was prepared to put his name to. That would have been the better outcome from Dr Ingram’s point of view it would have been a more honest outcome as far as the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet was concerned and it would at least have left us more overtly in a situation where the Prime Minister needed to do what she should have done in the first place: set up an inquiry with the appropriate powers to compel those who had the answers to the questions—those who knew the truth behind the allegations—to go along and answer the questions. 
Today’s report solves nothing; it tells us nothing; it vindicates no one. It simply leaves a great stench hanging around that sometime over the next few weeks someone will have to do something to resolve because members of the public and the news media who report to the public are not convinced for one minute about the veracity fullness and completeness of the report that has been released today—and nor should they be. 
I am sad that the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet has allowed itself to be misused in this way. I want to say to Dr Ingram that I feel some sympathy for him in this respect but I think he has acted unwisely in allowing his name to be associated with a report that leaves these important matters hanging still to be resolved. In the context of Parliament I think this is a sad day for all of us and one that the Prime Minister in due course will come to regret.