Page 4181 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 23 October 1991
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The fact is that this money is not, as Mr Connolly said it was, a matter beyond the reach of government. I do not want to start a legal debate here; but, of course, the ACT (Self-Government) Act talks about just terms - it does not talk about compensation. Anyone who has had experience with resumptions over the years knows that "just terms" relates to parties coming to an agreement. It is not the case, as Mr Connolly implies it is, that you take X million off the NRMA and have to give it X million back. It is no such thing. It is a matter of just terms. "Just terms" may quite easily encompass legislation to retrospectively reset premiums and allow a recovery.
Were we in North America, class actions - which the Labor Party as a party endorses - would permit recovery action by a group of concerned motorists. Those types of actions have succeeded in the United States, and they may well be starting to succeed in this country in cases under the Trade Practices Act and in other Federal Court jurisdictions. It is not as simplistically blissfully clear as our young Attorney indicates. There are significant issues, including legal issues, that I am not going to mention today - issues that the NRMA would be well aware of - that would have clearly indicated to the NRMA that it should take a proactive role in this affair and not allow a ginger group - they have had some experience with ginger groups in the past few years - to take this issue up. They have handled it quite properly in that context and they have come quite straightforwardly to government.
Mr Speaker, the blissful, self-congratulatory speech by Mr Connolly typifies the sort of smugness about the way in which the deal has been done. I can remember Mr Connolly's face in the Estimates Committee when he was clearly hit, as Mr Stefaniak will recall, by something about which he had very little recall or possible knowledge. The amount was somewhere between $40m and $80m, he said that day. He now imports into his speech, with a soft and informative touch, legal opinion stretching back a long way. It is all very well to have the wisdom of hindsight. As an opposition, we have put a bomb under this Minister's tail and got him going to resolve the issue.
The issue came before the Alliance Government in a budget context in April. It is fatuous of Mr Connolly to say that money is irrelevant to any budget; that the NRMA money is irrelevant to a budget. If you look at budget paper No. 4, you will see a long list of trust accounts, private moneys, held and managed by the Government: The Bruce Stadium Trust Account; the Health Promotion Fund Trust Account, which was cruelly abolished before it had even had a chance to get out of adolescence; and a variety of other trust accounts, such as the Motor Vehicle Dealers Compensation Fund Trust Account. That is money that belongs somewhere else, but governments handle it. It would have been quite easy for Ms Follett to have included these moneys and to have negotiated herself into a situation to provide more budget information and have more community impact.
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