Page 3623 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 19 October 1993
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Mr Humphries: You said that he was president.
MR LAMONT: My understanding is that he was. I am prepared to stand corrected on that matter. I could also understand why you would not want him. Mr Snow is a member of the EPACT committee, a millionaire sailor and equestrian devotee - Mr Snow, the Liberal Party's man of the people. This is the same Mr Snow who believed that the ACT should savagely cut its welfare spending. Mr Snow was apparently unhappy with the life of the millionaire in Canberra and will now spend much of his time in Sydney. Mr Snow has snubbed those opposite. None of them, as far as I know, owns a yacht or an aeroplane or their own golf course. Plato said, "Wealth is the parent of luxury and indolence".
In Sydney, one presumes, Mr Snow will feel more at home with the members of his millionaire set, who pontificate about the plight of the poor in between the smoked salmon and the Bollinger.
Mr Westende: What is wrong with being a millionaire?
MR LAMONT: It may well be that the poet Horace was thinking of Mr Snow when he wrote those immortal lines, "Magnus inter opes inops" - a pauper in the midst of wealth. Typically, the Chief Minister, in my view, has been too polite about Mr Snow. I do not think the ACT Government, or the people in the ACT, will miss Mr Snow's advice. It was the same economic bilge that earlier this year was resoundingly rejected by the people not only of this country but specifically of this city.
I say farewell to George. I say farewell to Mr Snow. I say farewell to Mr Snow, with his home at Point Piper. I say farewell to Mr Snow, with his outdoor house and his indoor harbour. I say farewell to Mr Snow when he launches Brindabella II, for a not inconsiderable amount of money. Above all, I say farewell to Mr Snow, who leaves Canberra an extremely wealthy man, a man who has operated his business in the economic circumstances that prevail in this town, and has the audacity, almost on the day he leaves, to say, "I have had enough. I am going to spit the dummy and now I am going to walk out".
That does not apply to the Capital Property Group. A number of comments were passed in the article in the Canberra Times about the Capital Property Group. I am pleased to have received from Mr T.M. Snow the following letter:
It was of great concern to me to read, in this morning's paper, comments made by my brother concerning your administration.
My concern stems from the fact that the comments he made are his own personal comments and not the views of Capital Property Trust, its manager or Trustee. George is not the managing director of Capital Property Management Limited or, indeed, a shareholder and his views are not necessarily those of the management company, the Trust or Trustee.
If we have any position or views we wish to put to you, as the management company or the Trust, I will be the person doing it and I won't convey those views to you through the Canberra Times.
Would that George Snow had the tenacity of his brother.
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