Fair comment? Or a columnist with an 'axe to grind'?
GUERNSEY is rightly proud of its democracy and of the level of public engagement with its government – manifested in trenchant views expressed in all forms of media. It would be a foolish politician who complained about the criticism directed at him or her. We rejoice in a free press and States members should not cavil when they come under fire. What is true for members generally applies in spades to ministers. They have to have the thickest of skins and to laugh off, or maybe just shrug off, the daily critical assault.
Why, then, do I write about Mr Murphy's column of 21 October ('Message is clear: education doesn't count'). Isn't it fair comment for him to inveigh against Treasury and Resources' criticism of the Education Department's funding proposals for pre-school education?
Of course it is. What isn't fair, though, what is unacceptable, is for Mr Murphy to invent the line that the members of the Treasury and Resources Department take the view that (to quote the headline) 'education doesn't count' or (to quote the text) 'education isn't really all that important' or that Treasury and Resources is trying to persuade the States to take 'another spiteful act in an undeclared class war'.
Mr Murphy has form for this sort of thing. I recall his histrionic assertions – at the time of the debate in respect of the closure of the St Andrew's Primary School – that those (ironically, the Education Department) who were not of his own view (that the school should be retained) had no social conscience. They were, so he wrote, 'cynical' 'pygmies'... 'without sense or compassion.'
Mr Murphy seemed then, and again now, not to understand that in a democracy people are entitled to have differing views without inventing the reasons for those views. For the record, there is not a scintilla of truth in what Mr Murphy has to say about the views on education held by members of the Treasury and Resources Department.
Mr Murphy asserts that 'the island's Treasury is desperately trying to veto' Education's plans. This displays a woeful ignorance of our system of government from someone seeking to comment upon its work.
Unlike in many other jurisdictions, Treasury has no such veto. The Treasury board approaches every policy matter in accordance with its mandate: to advise the States as to the financial implications of the policies put before them and how they should be financed; that is what we have done in paragraph 6.2 of the relevant policy letter in the November Billet. It is for the States of Deliberation to decide.
States members ask for no thanks. Nor do they expect fawning approval from the commentariat. What they do ask is that their views be treated in good faith and not be the subject of fabrications as to their motives by someone with a political axe to grind.
Free speech means that others are entitled to hold opinions different from your own.
DEPUTY GAVIN ST PIER,
Minister,
Treasury and Resources Department.
