Page 611 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 12 April 1994
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One very interesting piece of information that I have looked at very carefully in the dossier of information provided to me by the Liberals is an article that appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald on 21 February 1994, which not only questioned the VITAB-ACTTAB contract but also questioned VicTAB's operations in Vanuatu, which nobody had particularly drawn my attention to. As I read through the article, I found that there were questions raised not only about the ACTTAB-VITAB contract but also about VicTAB's current operations in Vanuatu.
My feeling, after going through the Hansards, reading the information that had been provided and assessing what the Minister had said in the Assembly, was one of general confusion, but one which I believed would be sorted out in time by the process of the inquiry. I still have difficulty - and I am hoping that the Minister will address this at a later stage this evening - with the process of the severance of the link between ACTTAB and VicTAB. We had occasions in the Assembly in February and March this year when many questions were asked by the Opposition in relation to the VITAB-ACTTAB contract. It was obviously an issue of concern. I certainly did not have any idea whatsoever, and I believe no other member of the Assembly did, that the severance of ACTTAB's link with the VicTAB superpool would eventuate, possibly as a consequence of the ACTTAB-VITAB agreement and possibly as a result of various other matters that VicTAB were considering.
For me, the question is: Was the Minister unprepared to come to this Assembly to inform members about the fairly serious step VicTAB had taken in relation to ACTTAB? I recall very clearly that the Minister offered no information in responding to Opposition members' questions on the matter. The clearest indication was on 2 March in debate, and many members have referred to this already, in relation to a question by Mr Westende, which I do not believe the Minister answered in any way, shape or form. He did say that the ACTTAB-VITAB agreement was a good deal; that we had little to worry about.
While the Minister has said that we need to look very closely at those statements and not necessarily infer that they had anything to do with the ACTTAB-VicTAB contract, we should be mindful of the comments the Chief Minister has made that we need to see this issue in context. Part of the context of the VITAB-ACTTAB contract is most definitely the contract between ACTTAB and VicTAB. To me, the VITAB-ACTTAB contract took place because of ACTTAB's involvement with the Victorian TAB superpool. I do not think there is any getting away from that. As a member of this Assembly, I was left with the very distinct impression that there was nothing to worry about. At the conclusion of those sittings in the first week of March I felt, as a member of this Assembly, that I had nothing to fear. The Minister was saying to this Assembly that everything was all right and there were no likely adverse consequences for the ACT with regard to the ACTTAB-VITAB contract.
I think the Minister in his remarks, and I appreciated receiving a copy of the speech he delivered earlier today, is fairly unclear about that issue. Perhaps I can go back over some of the Minister's statements in his speech. He said in relation to that remark in the Assembly specifically:
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