Page 609 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 12 April 1994
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I do not intend to go through all the pieces of information the Liberals have provided me with, because I would be here for the rest of the evening; but I would like to present a summary of where I think the issues currently stand. I would like to do that in conjunction with the issues Mrs Carnell raised as Leader of the Opposition when she introduced the motion we are considering. The most significant issue as far as I have been concerned all through this consideration of the ACTTAB-VITAB contract is the severing of the contract between ACTTAB and VicTAB, which was announced in the middle of March this year. I think it is fairly clear from the trail of information that the calls for the Minister to resign and the suggestion of a motion of no confidence in the Minister all started to be initiated after that severance of the ACTTAB-VicTAB link was known, both to members of the Assembly and to the general community. That, to me, is the most significant issue.
There are other issues that the Leader of the Opposition has identified in her remarks and which comprise some of the material we have been given in relation to the ACTTAB-VITAB contract. I should like to go through them briefly. Mrs Carnell talked about the competition with other States that ACTTAB had and said that it had been stated by the Minister and various other players in the process that ACTTAB had competed for this contract with VITAB. We have received information from the Chief Minister in terms of a statutory declaration, which I believe she referred to in her remarks, from Philip Neck about a statement he has made that purports to substantiate that there were other TABs that were openly competing for the ACTTAB contract. The relevant paragraph of the statutory declaration the Minister tabled earlier today states:
On the 11th April 1994 I asked Mr Dan Kolomanski, a Director of VITAB Limited, whether at the time VITAB was negotiating with ACT/TAB it had also been negotiating a similar arrangement with the Queensland TAB. He confirmed to me that those negotiations with the Queensland TAB to provide similar off-shore betting services to VITAB had continued up to the time when the ACTTAB/VITAB Contract was signed on the 22nd October 1993.
This is a statutory declaration from Mr Neck, but it undoubtedly relies on information provided to him by Mr Dan Kolomanski. I think a question still remains in the minds of the members of this Assembly about exactly what was the nature of the competitive environment ACTTAB was in up to the time the ACTTAB-VITAB contract was signed. We also have information provided to us by the Liberal Opposition in terms of a letter from the Queensland TAB - I believe, the chief executive officer - saying that, as far as they are concerned, they have a fairly different version of events. I raised earlier the fact that we are considering two issues: The motion of no confidence in the Minister that has been proposed today and the inquiry being chaired by Professor Pearce. This is probably one example of where the inquiry process will undoubtedly uncover the facts of the scenario. As Ms Follett indicated earlier, we will all have the opportunity, once that inquiry's report is tabled, to make our own assessment of Professor Pearce's conclusions.
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