Page 633 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 12 April 1994
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inquiry process would be used as a way of ensuring that ministerial responsibility to the parliament was never available. An inquiry process is a process to examine what happened. It is not an opportunity for a Minister, or a government, for that matter, to try to shift responsibility for how it is dealt with in this chamber.
I found it ironic, in a way, that we had Labor members arguing so strongly, when this issue was raised before, I think, by Mr Wood, that they were influential in ensuring that Nick Greiner was taken out. The result there, after Nick Greiner came back and said, "See, I was cleared", was interesting. It seemed to me that he was not cleared from his parliamentary responsibility. He may have been cleared from his legal responsibilities and, similarly, it may well be that the result of the inquiry will find that all was well. That has nothing to do with what is happening here tonight. If an inquiry finds that all is well but the Minister is found to lack the confidence of this Assembly, it would seem to me that that will be fine. They are two entirely different things.
I would like to address the way I saw things. Madam Speaker, I did not ask any questions about VITAB. In fact, I sat back and watched the Liberals asking the questions and often wondered why it was that they were asking them and what they were pursuing. I said to Mrs Carnell out of the chamber on a number of occasions, "What is the point of this?", and the reply was to the effect, "There really is something in this, you will see. Would you like a briefing at some time?". It was one of those things that were not particularly high on my agenda, so I did not get around to getting the briefing from the Liberals until after the last sitting. Why was that? It was because I had the impression that, really, there was nothing in it, that all was really well, apart from a bit of muckraking coming from the Liberals. But the truth of the matter was that things were not well.
I am going to run through the points, even though other members have done that, to show how I perceived these things. I will take point No. 1, the competition with other TABs. The impression we had was that there was competition - not with one TAB, not with just Queensland, but with other TABs. I am sure that we could go back to the Hansard to find it. The reality is that the impression was gained that there were other TABs - not just one, but others - going for this deal and that they missed out. The only evidence presented is the evidence about Queensland. So immediately we have a problem in terms of its being plural. But, even in terms of the evidence presented on Queensland, we have a letter from the Queensland TAB that makes it very clear that VITAB had approached Queensland and there was just nothing in it.
The director of VITAB seemed to have a different idea. He had not finished with Queensland. From his perspective, he probably had not. He probably still wanted to do a deal, and he probably still thought he could go to Queensland if he wanted to. How do we know that? We know that through a statutory declaration by Mr Philip Neck. I have no question about the genuine nature of the statutory declaration from the point of view of Mr Neck.
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