It’s High Time for MPs the likes of Lachie Hunter to go Hunting
Being the tragic political junkie I am—thirty years orbiting around party rooms, committee hearings, and bar tabs—I’ve wasted more of my life watching WA parliamentary estimates hearings than any sane human ever should. You’d think I’d learn. But like slowing down to gawk at a roadside crash, every year I can’t help rubbernecking the sorry spectacle.
Estimates is meant to be the opposition’s one decent swing at the government’s budget—the rare chance to force ministers to justify the billions in taxpayer cash they merrily shovel around like chook feed. Instead, it’s turned into the legislative equivalent of asking a sulky teenager to explain where last week’s allowance went.
One of the worst displays I’ve witnessed in recent years starred none other than Hannah Beazley—Member for Victoria Park, new on the front bench, and proudly sporting the Beazley family political brand. Her father, Kim, could charm a room of farmers even though he was from the other side. Beazley junior? Let’s just say she missed out on the old man’s easy-going nature.
Now the freshly minted minister representing the Minister for Agriculture who sits in the other chamber, Hannah found herself fronting up to a barrage of perfectly legitimate questions from the newly elected Member for Central Wheatbelt, Lachie Hunter. Young Lachie was doing exactly what his last name suggests—going hunting for answers—on everything from savage cuts to the DPIRD budget, to why funding for the Royal Show is missing, to what happened to the Grower Group Alliance dollars.
Instead of calmly leaning on the army of departmental minders behind her (and they were stacked like hay bales around her), Beazley could barely be bothered to go through the motions. She frequently fobbed off Hunter’s questions, shuffled papers, ignored the attempts by the public servants to help provide answers or simply decided it was beneath her to take the opposition seriously.
At one point, she even bristled at being questioned, loftily declaring she wasn’t a “subject matter expert”—glossing over the fact that a small army of advisors was seated right behind her, ready to assist. And if it really was all too hard, she could have simply taken the questions on notice. Instead, Hannah seemed to prefer offering Hunter nothing more than a dismissive smirk.
Of course, no modern parliamentary farce is complete without someone playing the gender card. Right on cue, Cassie Rowe, the Member for Belmont, strolled in to lob a smug accusation of “mansplaining” at Hunter — a cheap rerun of Julia Gillard’s old trick when she couldn’t keep pace with Tony Abbott. I’d hoped Australian politics had grown out of that tired “girls’ club” tactic, where any robust scrutiny gets branded sexist to shut down debate. Apparently not.
Meanwhile, Hunter — perhaps wondering if he’d wandered into a university feminist union debate by mistake — stayed focused on the job he was elected to do. The real question is why the government so clearly couldn’t, or wouldn’t, provide answers. Either they’re arrogantly above accountability, or they’ve spent far too many hours at work leafing through the collected biographies of Gillard and Jacinda Ardern, and not nearly enough time studying the budget papers.
Because the budget papers, grim as they are, tell a story. A story the government — and the Minister herself — will keep insisting, Monty Python-style, means the dead DPIRD is still alive and well. Nothing to see here, move along from the wreckage of seven years of cuts (as I laid out in last week’s paper). But maybe this time is different. Maybe a 10.24% real cut to employee benefits really is nothing to worry about. Minister Beazley certainly didn’t seem overly concerned.
Don’t worry about those numbers trending down they are just projects coming to an end, trust me the Treasurer loves Ag Fisheries and Regional Development and always gives the department more when they need it. Good luck with that anyone who’s been at DPIRD or the old Ag Dept for a decade or two or three can point to the empty offices.
It’s not just in agriculture. Watch enough of these hearings and you’ll see the same strategy: waffle until the opposition runs out of time. Ministers feign offence, deflect and retreat as rapidly as possible to dumb ass castle up on the hill.
Estimates should be the one chance for sunlight. It’s meant to be a democratic disinfectant—where the executive arm of government must front up, justify, explain, and be exposed if they don’t. Instead, it’s become a shallow performance where arrogance trumps transparency, aided by backbenchers chirping in with smirks and partisan howls whenever the opposition gets close to the jugular. It’s not a good look and the Premier should take note.
Maybe that’s the biggest tell. If the government truly had nothing to hide—if everything in this budget was so squeaky clean—you’d think they’d welcome the chance to boast about it. Instead, they stonewall, mock, and ultimately treat the process with the same disdain most of us reserve for clueless uni students chanting to the River to the Sea.
But from where I sit, I say: good hunting, Lachie Hunter — he’s well and truly onto something. And the next time Beazley, Rowe, or any other MP tries to pull a Julia Gillard by playing the tired old misogyny card and branding fair scrutiny as “mansplaining,” maybe he should meet them with some of the newer social media classics: a quick “thanks for the weaponised incompetence,” or my personal favourites, “crybullying” and “cope and seethe.” All of them perfectly capture the smug deflections and identity politics flourishes trotted out whenever real accountability comes knocking.
Or — here’s a thought — they could simply answer the questions with a bit of respect and transparency. Because let’s be honest: when ministers start throwing up emotional smokescreens instead of facts, it’s usually a sure sign they’ve got something to hide.
