Page 4314 - Week 15 - Tuesday, 20 November 1990
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portfolio responsibilities - in particular, Mr Collaery and I. I again point out, as was pointed out to the committee, that the Labor Government was in power basically for less than seven months. It expended approximately $7,000 in seven months. It was a minority government and, more to the point, there was a pilots dispute for, I believe, 4 or five months of those seven months. It made a lot of difference to the amount of travel that was available from and to Canberra.
Mr Berry: I did not ever ask for a flight that I did not get.
MR DUBY: Many flights out of Canberra were unavailable; but, more to the point, many conferences which had been scheduled to occur during that period were cancelled and held over until the end of the dispute, which, I might add, virtually coincided with government being taken by us.
However, as Mr Berry said, he had no difficulty in getting flights; nor, it would appear, would have, for example, the former Chief Minister. Figures were tabled before this year,s Estimates Committee which, as has been pointed out on a number of occasions, had a Government majority. It was supposedly stacked in our favour. The committee, however, chose to overlook, for example, that in August 1990 the then Chief Minister was able to obtain a flight to Melbourne for herself and her media adviser "to do radio interviews".
Mr Wood: August 1990; that is interesting.
MR DUBY: It was in August 1989, I am sorry. It was to do radio interviews, at a cost of $1,200-odd to the ACT taxpayer. The previous Chief Minister saw fit to travel to Melbourne to do radio interviews. Given that fact, I personally find it rather offensive that Mr Collaery and I should be told that we are junketeering when we are attending conferences on behalf of the ACT, for the first time. They are conferences at which it is most essential that the ACT should be represented. I reject that suggestion entirely.
Mr Connolly: They do not believe it out there, Craig.
MR DUBY: Of course not. They do not believe it out there, because people like you go out and say things that you know perfectly well are simply untrue. Today, for example, in question time we had that person opposite Mr Moore holding up copies of the Brisbane Courier-Mail and asking whether the Chief Minister is aware that a Minister in the previous Government in Queensland had been gaoled on fraud charges, I think it was, and proceeding to ask a question about Mr Collaery's travel expenses.
The clear imputation in that questioning was that Mr Collaery had been engaged in some fraudulent activity and that a former Minister in Queensland had been engaged in
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