Page 619 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 12 April 1994
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
Mr Berry: Was he a principal? Do not answer that one, Gary. It is going to dob you in. Was he a principal?
MR HUMPHRIES: I am afraid that if he is negotiating the contract he sounds like a principal player to me. Madam Speaker, Mr Berry said that the Liberals caused VicTAB to expel the ACT from the superpool. He raises extraordinary allegations and he supports them by tabling a document which, incidentally, was given to the media, so we were hardly secretive about this information, were we? We gave it to the media as an indication of what we were saying about the criminal record of particular individuals. That information happened to come from the Victorian Minister, but the assertion that we have made is that we made no contact with the Victorian Government about the question of VITAB and VicTAB's arrangements with the superpool until well after the ACT had been expelled from the superpool.
Mr Berry: There is a pretty big question of propriety about that.
MR HUMPHRIES: That is the case. If you have any evidence to the contrary, you table it; you produce it. Do not pretend that other people have the same conniving kind of mind that apparently you have as far as these sorts of issues are concerned. Now he leaves the chamber. Mr Berry said that the Liberals say that Bartholomew has convictions in the ACT Magistrates Court. We have never said that. He refuted this assertion by tabling a document showing that Mr Bartholomew has no convictions under section 25 of the Magistrates Court Act 1930 of the ACT. We have not said, at any stage, that he has had any convictions in the ACT, but we made it quite clear that he has convictions in Victoria. That is where - - -
Mr Connolly: You said that he was arrested at the Hyatt.
MR HUMPHRIES: No; McMahon. You are getting confused, Mr Connolly. Do pay attention. McMahon has been arrested; Bartholomew has been convicted, twice. That is the situation. By the way, we have asserted that. Mr Berry has produced a flurry of papers in this case to deny that that is the case but has not laid a finger on any of those allegations. What we have said is that Mr Bartholomew has two convictions for SP bookmaking related offences, and Mr McMahon was charged in 1988 with two offences of the same nature. That is what we have asserted. Mr Berry has not put before this Assembly a single document or allegation to prove that what we said is wrong. That remains our assertion.
Madam Speaker, Mr Berry raised as his very first point in his contribution to this debate that the Liberals did not ask VITAB itself for any details until quite recently. With great respect, we had made contact with VITAB before that point and we discovered, as have many members of the media in the ACT and around Australia, that VITAB is extremely difficult to get to speak to. It is a wonder that the Minister was able to table any documents here today. It is a wonder that he got on to these people to get them to supply any information to him, because we found great difficulty in making contact with VITAB. I might say too that, having had this quite legitimate information put to us about VITAB, it is hardly surprising that we - - -
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .