Page 608 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 12 April 1994
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I have also been back through the relevant debates in the Assembly - in November 1993, December 1993, and into this year with our sittings in February and March. I think I can speak also for my colleague, Mr Moore, when I say that we have not asked questions about the ACTTAB-VITAB contract in the Assembly. It is the Liberal Opposition whose members have asked questions in the Assembly on this particular issue. I guess we have been interested observers in terms of the process of questions the Opposition has asked and answers the Minister has given. So it has been very important for us to go back through the Hansards to gain our impressions of the debate at the time.
I also received yesterday from the Liberal Opposition, as I mentioned earlier, a fairly extensive dossier of information, and I spent some time considering it into the very small hours of this morning. I guess it would be appropriate now to talk briefly about some of the material that is contained in that dossier. It would be fair to say that my general impression of the material the Liberals have put together is that it is basically patchy, and earlier today I indicated to them my impressions about this information.
There is no doubt that some key pieces of information have been included. In general, it has been quite helpful in informing me, as a member of this Assembly, about some of the processes that have occurred in relation to the ACTTAB-VITAB contract. However, there has also been some material included which I consider to be of a longbow nature, and I would like to present the Assembly with an example of what I consider to be drawing a longbow on this issue. The piece of information I will refer to is headed "21 May 1992" and concerns a ministerial statement that the Minister, Wayne Berry, presented to the Assembly on the results of a racing Ministers conference held in Alice Springs on 30 April and 1 May 1992. It goes on to quote a statement the Minister made at the time:
... following the Alice Springs meeting, officers of the Office of Sport and Recreation have held preliminary discussions with the ACT Law Office with a view to ensuring that the legislation in the ACT covering the offence of SP bookmaking is effective ... The issue of illegal SP bookmaking cannot be glibly dismissed.
At the end of that summary, it is stated:
Mr Berry should have paid more attention to what his own ACTTAB was about to do. An agreement the TAB would sign with a Vanuatu based company in October 1993 was negotiated by a man with SP bookmaking convictions and witnessed by a man who had been charged with SP offences.
I guess the connection is really one of a longbow nature. We are referring initially to a ministerial statement the Minister made in the middle of 1992 and then linking it fairly significantly and directly with events that have happened in regard to the ACTTAB-VITAB contract, discussions on which commenced in the middle of 1993.
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