Page 623 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 12 April 1994
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any part of his entire portfolio by the time ACTTAB came to be expelled from VicTAB at the end of January. He does not have the excuse that he has used time and again in his remarks today, and that he has used selectively on various occasions since the ACT was expelled from the superpool, namely, that he did not know what was going on and he was badly advised. You cannot hide behind that cloak. If you can step aside from your responsibilities in that way, then no Minister need face that kind of responsibility in the future.
Similarly, with respect to an inquiry, if a Minister can avoid facing the question of whether he or she has misled the house by commissioning an independent inquiry into some related aspects of a particular issue, then clearly, Madam Speaker, no Minister need ever face again - at least not when he has had notice - a motion concerning misleading of the house. Obviously this Government believes that, if the Pearce inquiry comes back and says that the VITAB deal was okay, that settles the matter of Mr Berry misleading the house; there is no further issue as far as that is concerned. This Government cannot distinguish between the question of whether VITAB might or might not be a good deal and the question of whether Mr Berry has or has not misled the house. Let us be clear that it is possible that certain things that Mr Berry has said at various stages may have been truthful but might yet have in fact misled the house. Similarly, it is possible that he said things which were not true which might not have misled the house. Truth and misleading are closely related but are not the same thing. The Government does not settle this matter by having Professor Dennis Pearce conduct an inquiry into whether VITAB was a good deal or not.
Mr Connolly: But at least then all the cards are on the table and this house can debate any issue it likes.
MR HUMPHRIES: I know what you are going to say, Mr Connolly. You are going to come into this place, if it turns out that VITAB is a good deal, and you are going to say, "This exonerates Mr Berry". You are going to say, "Look, he has a good deal. There is nothing wrong with that". That is what you are going to say. We can read you like a book. Madam Speaker, I do not think that Professor Pearce is going to find that VITAB was a good deal, but that is for Professor Pearce to comment upon. The fact of life, though, is that misleading the house is a matter uniquely, solely, within the prerogatives of this place. I do not believe that an academic or politician or anybody else outside this place has the right to tell us whether or not we have been misled by a particular statement or statements made in this house. That matter is for us, not for anybody else.
I believe, Madam Speaker, that the evidence before the house tonight is quite conclusive about that matter. We have been misled. There are statements which simply are not true, and the Minister knows that they are not true. He knows now that they are not true, and he should have known some time ago that they were not true. We should be entitled to a better standard than that, and we can enforce that better standard only by passing this motion tonight.
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