Coastal Voice 
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| Friday, 16 November 2007 | ||||||
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Mr MIKE BAIRD (Manly) [12.12 p.m.]: I raise an issue that has been brought to my attention about the standard required of those in public life. As I have walked around the constituency of Manly local residents have made it very clear to me that high standards are demanded of people in public life. The residents of the Central Coast and Lake Macquarie area—indeed, people throughout New South Wales—are concerned about recent trends and are calling for higher standards from us all. I am pleased to champion this cause. Bogus community groups have no place in public life. There is no place in public life for an organisation pretending to be locally based and concerned with local community issues when, in reality, it is run from another State. That is deception. It is the type of unacceptable standard that sometimes characterises public life and that people rightly complain about. Equally, whether in public, corporate or other walks of life, we should all demand the highest standards of conduct. Last year a judgment by the New South Wales Industrial Relations Commission revealed damning conduct. It identified conduct it described as "deceitful" and an unsuccessful attempt to "completely misrepresent" a situation. The commission also found:
on balance, it must be concluded that the conduct of the HREA was the more reprehensible, exploiting an opportunity which had presented itself without any regard for the arrangement it had made in the past with the PSA and then deliberately misleading that Union as to the steps it was taking in breach of that arrangement. The Industrial Relations Commission also found that: Information which was provided was in a number of respects inaccurate and known to be so and was presented in a fashion designed to disguise that it had emanated from the HREA through Mr Thomson. "Mr Thomson" is Craig Thomson, a man who, until recently, headed a community group called Coastal Voice. I understand that Coastal Voice is neither a real community group, nor local. I believe that the group was run from Melbourne, where its website domain is registered to the national office of the Health Services Union—a union run by Mr Thomson. Its key members, who Mr Thomson painted as "concerned locals", are all Labor and union activists. In this sense, Labor is treating the Lake Macquarie and Central Coast regions with contempt and as the electoral playthings of interstate union bosses who only pretend to be locals. This strikes at the core of why people go into public life. If you do not stand for a cause, if you pretend to be someone you are not, you should answer to the public and the people you represent. Add to:          Write Comment
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