Page 1312 - Week 05 - Thursday, 25 June 1992
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Then he quoted from this document.
Mr Berry: How do you know he quoted from the document?
MR DE DOMENICO: Because it appears so in the proof Hansard, Mr Berry. He then quoted this:
The Government is perhaps pushing the controversy on circuses to focus attention away from the more powerful consequences ...
et cetera, et cetera. On noting this anomaly, Madam Speaker, I yesterday approached the Clerk and sought his advice as to how best to correct it. Acting on advice from the Clerk as to how to remedy the matter, I approached Mr Lamont and suggested that, on reading the Hansard proof, it appeared that he had inadvertently tabled the wrong document. So I did go and approach Mr Lamont, on advice. Mr Lamont then suggested that this was not the case and that the whole episode was simply a debating tactic. I think that was the phrase that you used, Mr Lamont. Madam Speaker, I do not accept that explanation. I believe that it was a deliberate failure by Mr Lamont to table a document which the Assembly ordered him to table. This is unacceptable and deserves more than condemnation now, Madam Speaker; it deserves censure.
MR MOORE (4.01): Madam Speaker, it seems to me that we have before us a very serious matter indeed. It is a matter of thumbing your nose at a parliament, and that is totally unacceptable in any member of any party. The evidence that Mr De Domenico has presented is evidence of a very serious matter indeed. I remember a discussion with a friend of mine who was involved in assisting Commissioner Fitzgerald, and he said to me that corruption begins with the small things. In fact, he often wondered whether corruption in Queensland began with the notion that police officers could ride for free on public transport, in that it builds up in somebody's mind the idea that they are beyond what normal people can and cannot do. In dealing with this situation I think we all have a very sober warning following events in New South Wales over the last few weeks. Clearly, Mr Greiner and Mr Tim Moore thought that they were just looking after one of their mates and fixing Dr Metherell up with a job. That situation probably seemed to them to be fairly minor.
When Mr Lamont was talking at that time - I have a copy of the draft Hansard - he had a couple of papers in front of him, and he was playing with one and holding up the other. I will quote a little from that Hansard. Mr De Domenico raised a point of order and said:
Could he please table that document, or can I seek leave to have him table that document that he was reading from?
Mr Lamont replied:
... I have ... no difficulty in tabling this document.
At the time he held up a document and Mr Kaine said:
They are just some scrubby old notes.
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