Rau hits back at ‘silly’ Marshall
Planning Minister John Rau has hit back at Liberal leader Steven Marshall’s “silly” and “sad” calls for an urgent briefing on mooted legislative reform.
Marshall yesterday lamented that the Government was being “disrespectful” to the Opposition by dragging its feet on bipartisan discussions about planning reforms due to be debated in parliament this year.
Rau initially responded with a statement saying the Government was still formulating its response to a wide-ranging review chaired by Brian Hayes QC. But he contacted InDaily late yesterday to reveal his office had provided a briefing of the review’s key findings to Opposition spokesman Steven Griffiths.
“That went for about an hour and a half …Vickie (Chapman, Shadow Urban Development Minister) wandered in for a period of time,” Rau insisted.
“It was not a general briefing for MPs, it was a specific briefing for the Opposition; whether Steven didn’t know about that, or forgot about that, I don’t know, (but) to suggest we’re not sharing information with him in a timely fashion is quite frankly ludicrous – he knows everything about it that we know about it.”
Rau said he was befuddled by the Opposition Leader’s claims, and “I don’t know where all this is coming from”.
“It’s a little bit sad, really, that he’s behaving like this,” he said.
“It’s just a bit kind of silly, really, to go off about not being talked to about something that doesn’t exist yet…As soon as we have a formulated position from the Government, I’ll of course brief anyone from the Opposition that wants to know.”
Griffiths said he and Marshall attended a general information session open to all MPs but had no specific memory of a private briefing from Rau’s office. However, after checking his diary, he confirmed he’d had a briefing on the Hayes Review recommendations on December 19 and “Vickie Chapman walked in for a minute”. He has since written to the minister asking for a further briefing after the consultation period for the recommendations expired on February 13.
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But Marshall maintains a backgrounder on publicly available review recommendations is “nothing to do with it”.
“I’m requesting a detailed briefing on how we work co-operatively for reforms,” he said.
The Hayes Review was established in February 2013.
“If (Rau’s) honestly saying two years after he initiated this inquiry he doesn’t know what he’s going to do, that’s a massive indictment.”
Rau expects to take a policy proposal to cabinet “soon”.
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