Page 4939 - Week 16 - Tuesday, 26 November 1991
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I assure Mr Berry that the day-to-day negotiations at law were handled most competently by the Australian Government Solicitor, whose office was not employed or consulted for the making of that extraordinary agreement - and that must be a subject for the inquiry in due course. The league had solicitors who were known to me to be competent and able. As Attorney, apart from signing the letters of demand and insisting on knowing the background to them, I did not involve myself, quite properly, in the day-to-day legal negotiations on the basis of what we could make out of the 25 June 1989 agreement, negotiated by Mr Paul Whalan with the league.
Mr Berry is the Minister responsible for this $1m. To date, he has not accounted to the people of the ACT for it. He dodged the issues in the Estimates Committee hearing, as the record shows; and, again, he has simply put up an empty argument. He has not told this house where the $1m is, and what arrangements he has made to get it. In fact, he has said that he might be looking at some sort of arrangement for the money.
But the $1m is one issue. It is a 20-year agreement that we seem to have found our way into - a 20-year agreement, involving a $600,000 loss in real terms in this year, each year. That is an enormous drain on the sports budget. It puts a hole in this appropriation, and it is not fair to the other sporting groups and codes, particularly in respect of the junior codes and the funds we need in women and girls sports to address access and equity issues.
It is another contradiction of Labor's ethic: Firstly, it denies their claim to be competent financial managers, which we know nationally now to be a joke; and, secondly, it denies adequate funding elsewhere in the sports budget, and therefore it is anti-social justice. It is another contradiction - like their vote yesterday against giving migrants interpreters. That, of course, was noted by a crowd of some thousands that I spoke to today at Parliament House, and it is being noted again this evening. I assure the members of this house that one of the biggest errors that this Labor Party has ever made was to attack the ethnic and migrant community yesterday.
I reject totally any suggestion that the Alliance Government did not do all in its power to repair that extraordinary agreement. It worked competently towards resolving it. It showed patience, and the government officials involved, in the Government Solicitor's Office, showed a high degree of negotiating skill. When the inquiry is ultimately held, that truth will be out.
MR BERRY (Minister for Health and Minister for Sport) (8.51): Mr Collaery is not fair game; he is a pretty easy mark. We could get involved in tit for tat about whether or not Mr Collaery was guilty of something in the period of his ministry. But the facts speak for themselves - over a long period of time the $1m was available, and it was before the bubble had burst in relation to the Raiders.
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