Page 634 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 12 April 1994
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The reality is that it is evidence at a third remove. It is saying, "This person said to me ...". If there was to be a genuine piece of evidence, it would be a statutory declaration from Mr Kolomanski. When you consider his involvement in this business, one would have to give great weight to a statutory declaration by Mr Neck. I do not give weight to the evidence presented at a third remove in that statutory declaration, and I am referring to part 2. So really that piece of evidence is nothing. I still have doubts at this stage as to what we have been told in the Assembly - that there was competition with TABs, plural. Why were we told that there was this competition? To give the impression that it was a good deal, that everything was going well.
On another point, why were we told that this was an Australian company? Because we are going to feel much more comfortable with an Australian company than we are with a company in Vanuatu. To the best of my knowledge, that matter still has not been corrected. Why were we told that it was a public company and not a private company, a company that is really not open to scrutiny? To give an impression to us that all was well, and that was the impression I had. Of the directors, why were we told that Mr Dowd was a director, along with Mr Kolomanski and Mr McMahon, I think it was? Why were we told that that was the case when Oak Ltd was a director as well? Because having a company as a director in a deal such as this - a company that we could not search, a company that we cannot find out anything about - would have rung a lot of bells. Instead, we have an impression that all was well.
We have, with today's date on a fax from Dan Kolomanski consultants, a page marked "Confidential", which Mr Berry said that he was able to table, from VITAB Ltd purporting to be of its 10 October meeting. As Gary Humphries has said, how do we know that is the 10 October meeting? I must admit that I still have my doubts about that. What about the bona fides? We have heard the case on that, but the evidence presented to us includes a statement from the Australian Federal Police on a search done through Macphillamy Cummins and Gibson. It is a police certificate, name check only, and Cornelius McMahon is okay. Why do we know that he is okay but we cannot check the others? The question I asked Terry Connolly to clarify for me was whether the criminal indices of the Australian Federal Police include other States as well or whether it is just the Australian Federal Police. He was able to provide me with the information that the Federal Police indices include all the other States; so that is fine. But we have a privacy problem. We can find out about Mr McMahon because he has no convictions - I think that is correct.
Mr Connolly: No; he must have signed a consent.
MR MOORE: We can find out about Mr McMahon because he gave permission, because he consented. When I go for my bus driver's licence or a public licence, I have to have a police check. The first thing they ask you for is your permission to do that kind of search. How much more important is it in this kind of search that the bona fides of somebody can be checked? You can ask Dan Kolomanski, McMahon, Dowd, or whoever, for that permission, saying, "We are not going to do a deal with you until you have given us that permission". That is how we do the check. There is no privacy question; it is not a problem because you have to do it that way, and it ought to have been done that way. If this check was not done to that calibre, after questions had started to be
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