Page 753 - Week 05 - Thursday, 6 July 1989
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ministerial bench for some indeterminate time, probably for as long as I speak, but that depends on the water supply.
We have in this Territory an additional problem, and that is that we have had government in a presidential manner. The Australian Capital Territory has been governed as if it were Hong Kong. It has been governed by fiat - it has been governed at the whim of Federal Ministers - and we saw that on the eve of the election with two extraordinary decisions by Mr Holding in the planning and development area. Those in power will always protect the power that they have accrued to themselves. Power is one of the greatest evils when it is directed in the wrong manner in any democratic society. It is quite clear that in the Territory we have had an aggregation of power such as to exclude the community viewpoint on a number of important issues.
The people of the ACT will not stand by and allow minority power groupings - or, as my friend and legal colleague John Haslem said, a Canberra Incorporated - to persist. Canberra Incorporated is doomed. Canberra Incorporated is a shadowy group of people in the know, who know each other, who are known to some of us in this city and who, as Mr Haslem said, were a little too friendly. I congratulate Mr Haslem on his restrained language, and it may well be that one thing the Rally has to do is to learn not to be too outraged about this situation which is apparently at large in the Territory.
There are some things that one must concede are in existence. Firstly, white-collar crime is a particularly pernicious problem in society. The people who lose in that situation are nearly always private individuals. They are the people who really have no say in the events that surround them. On the list as a matter of importance for discussion in this chamber is the situation of commercial tenancies in the ACT. One aspect of the problem and malaise in that area comes from decision making which has not been consultative and which clearly has benefited a smaller sector of the Australian Capital Territory.
It is within that context that the Rally first made its decision to draw the attention of the people to concerns it had regarding the apparent conflict of interest situation of there being a senior official in the Administration who also was a large and prominent developer in the city. In the speech the Rally gave in this chamber - and I am responding, Mr Speaker, to the very points that have been raised in this motion - the Rally drew attention in a restrained manner to the dealings of a Mr Anthony Hedley and the dealings of Hamib Pty Limited.
Those statements were made extempore by me in this chamber because, strangely, the speaking order fell out that morning. As you will recall, Mr Speaker, Mr Kaine stood up and said that the first notice on the paper could not be led because Mr Humphries was not present in the chamber. Mr Kaine, who had served with Mr Hedley on the Gaming and
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