Page 630 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 12 April 1994
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That is reasonably substantial backing. We were told that the directors had to give some financial undertaking. I am not sure what that was, whether it was substantial or not. In other words, I do not know what relevance we can place on that. If the Minister or one of the members involved could let us know, that would be helpful.
Mr Berry mentioned that the directors were checked by Price Waterhouse. I remember going over the debates and thinking about what he said. At the time I got the idea that Price Waterhouse had done the job and I naturally assumed that the bona fides had been checked, not that there was just a company search. I think enough evidence has been presented to this Assembly to suggest that the bona fides had not been checked. What the police did in the very recent past is not all that relevant. It may be relevant, but we are talking about what happened before the deal was done. We are talking about when questions were first being asked in the house.
What were the bona fides of the directors? We have heard that Mr McMahon was charged but not convicted. If someone is charged but not convicted they are innocent before the law. That is a very important point. However, were I involved in checking out the bona fides of someone and found that they had been charged for gambling offences, though found innocent, that would alert me to the fact that I needed to make extra checks. I would have someone go over the evidence that was presented. I would have someone contact the police involved and say, "Look, what was the situation? Why was he charged? Did you fellows make a mistake?". I am not 100 per cent sure that the charge has been finalised. I would presume so, although there was some suggestion that it is still going on.. There was also a statement that Mr Bartholomew has been charged and convicted. While not a director or shareholder of any companies involved in this, as far as we know, there is no doubt that he had some involvement. If someone was approaching the Government on a gambling matter you would get a list of everybody involved and check them all out, for fairly obvious reasons.
Mr De Domenico: Like the casino.
MR STEVENSON: As Mr De Domenico says, "Like the casino". That is normal. It is not that we have not had any experience in this Assembly of doing this. We have had enormous experience because we had the casino situation. We had an inquiry into a casino. It is vital that we check out these things. I remember that we went to South Australia on the casino inquiry and we were told by someone in charge there that there were no problems with directors associated with their casino. I went along to the local newspaper morgue, got out their files and read of two cases that involved directors of the company that we had been told had been given a clean bill of health. That suggests to me that there are many situations where people are not accepting their responsibility. One could always debate why that is so.
There is no doubt that the Minister has a responsibility to give information to the parliament and that he has a duty of care. If a Minister makes a mistake or is misled by a member of his staff, it is perfectly reasonable; it has happened many times. We have all made mistakes in this Assembly in things that we have said and we have all stood up and
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