Page 2688 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 25 August 1993
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Madam Speaker, let me put the matter on this basis: Mr Wright must be said to have a question of doubt hanging over his conduct in this matter. That is clearly the reading that you should take from any proper perusal of these words used in the royal commission. There is an element of doubt about his activities, his involvement, his participation in this whole affair.
Mr Connolly: But there are no findings against Mr Wright.
MR HUMPHRIES: There are no adverse findings; that is true. The commission has not said, "Yes, Mr Wright should be charged with some offence". It is quite another thing, however, to say that Mr Wright has had no scintilla of adverse comment or unfavourable comment in the course of this report.
Hence, Madam Speaker, my colleagues Mr De Domenico and Mrs Carnell did not rise to say that Mr Wright has been involved in illegal activity, that Mr Wright has been a person who should not be appointed to the ACT tourism advisory board. They said neither of those things. What they did do was to ask a question. That is the function of question time - to ask questions. The question was: Is the Mr Wright who has been appointed to the ACT tourism advisory board the same one who is referred to as being Brian Burke's bagman in the WA Inc. royal commission? The answer to that question is clearly yes. He was the man that was mentioned in the WA Inc. royal commission and he was a bagman. That clearly comes forward from those references that were quoted by Mrs Carnell and Mr De Domenico when they asked those questions in question time today. If there was that question of doubt, is it not appropriate for a member of the Opposition to ask - - -
Ms Follett: What doubt?
MR HUMPHRIES: There is an element of doubt. How could you possibly read these words, Madam Chief Minister, and not have an element of doubt?
Ms Follett: Easily. There is no finding - - -
MR HUMPHRIES: You had no element of doubt?
Ms Follett: There is no finding of guilt.
MR HUMPHRIES: Madam Speaker, I pose this question: If someone came to you and said, "I want to pay somebody else, but I cannot do it myself. If I give you the money, will you do it for me?", would that not raise some question in your mind, Chief Minister, that something unusual, something suspicious, was happening?
Ms Follett: The royal commission has found no such thing.
MR HUMPHRIES: Madam Speaker, let met educate Ms Follett for a moment. Courts of law and royal commissions, which are very similar in fact in their natures, often sit down and look at evidence, and they will come to the conclusion, perhaps on the balance of probabilities, perhaps on other balances of weighing the evidence, that there is something amiss. But to go from there to say that a particular person against whom some suspicion lies should be either, in the case of a court, convicted or, in the case of a royal commission, adversely named and recommended for some prosecution is quite another matter.
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