Page 572 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 12 April 1994
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MR KAINE: The Chief Minister was demanding a little while ago that she be heard in silence. Why do you not apply the same rule for the rest of us?
Mr Lamont: The Chief Minister had something important to say, though.
MR KAINE: Now Mr Lamont gets into the act. He just cannot stand sitting there quietly.
Madam Speaker, there are two issues that cause me some concern in this matter. They have to do with, first of all, the nature of the deal that Mr Berry got himself into and then either his determination - I suspect that it is determination - or his inability to deal with the consequences of that on the floor of the house. Let us look at the deal. He has been saying that this is a good deal. It is interesting that it is only the Opposition that has dug out the facts about the deal that Mr Berry is so proud of. For example, I hope that Mr Berry, when he gets up to talk about it, tells us how this deal started. Did somebody sidle up to Mr Berry in a pub and say, "Have I got a deal for you!". Is that how it started, or was there some legitimate proposal that came forward in a formal and official way? I have my suspicions. Had Mr Berry taken the trouble to do the proper search that Mrs Carnell, Mr De Domenico and others asked him to do, it would have rung bells, surely.
Here we have a company established in Vanuatu. There are three principals. The relationship of two of them with the racing industry is, let us say, shady. The other one is a company about which we know nothing. It has only two shareholders. The only two shareholders are the two people to whom I have alluded, whose association with the racing industry could be reasonably described as shady. How much is their shareholding? They each have one share of $1. So we have a $2 company that comes along to us and says, "Have we got a deal for you, and you are going to make a lot of money", and Mr Berry falls for that. How come a $2 company registered in Vanuatu - they will not even register it in Australia - is going to make so much money for this Territory? But Mr Berry does not smell a rat. He continues to say, "This is a great deal. We have this great company over there that is going to make a lot of money for us". One could ask the question: If any money is to be made, who is going to make it? The facts, even since Mr Berry first bought this deal and set it in train, speak for themselves.
Despite the Chief Minister's protestation, for all practical purposes we have been excluded from the Victorian superpool. If that is not an adverse consequence, I do not know what is. We have yet to see whether New South Wales will let us into theirs. Why has this occurred? The reason is that Mr Berry went into the VITAB deal - no other reason, none whatsoever. But this is the deal that Mr Berry is so proud of. That concerns me. My only questioning of Mr Berry on this matter up until now has been to ascertain whether or not the ACT taxpayers were going to lose money over it. He gave an assurance that they would not. That remains to be seen, and that remains my major concern. The Chief Minister talks about grubby little deals. Only one person entered into a grubby little deal, and that is the Minister - and obviously with the agreement of the Chief Minister. We will see at the end of the day whether these two people turn out to have gone into a good deal or a bad one. That concerns me.
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