Page 657 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 12 April 1994
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afternoon, as Mr Berry claimed before. We were simply more thorough in our inquiries than Mr Berry was. The Minister has yet to answer how he reconciles a so-called criminal indices check by the AFP against information that one of the people who brokered this gaming deal has been convicted of SP bookmaking related offences on two occasions.
Ms Follett: Who was that?
MRS CARNELL: Peter Bartholomew. How does he reconcile this check against the information that one of the principals was charged with two gaming related offences in Australia? I come back to one of the directors of VITAB - that is, Oak Ltd - one that Price Waterhouse alerted the Minister to, one that he knows very well about. In fact, he knew in September. Can anybody conduct a criminal indices check of a company? If it were Mr Oak, maybe; but Oak is a company, not a person. The AFP cannot conduct a check of a director who happens to be both a company and one that is exclusively registered in Vanuatu.
Does the Minister in fact know who the directors and shareholders of Oak really are, not just who PITCO think they might be? Does he know whether a trust has been set up under the Oak Ltd structure, the unitholders of which possibly are unknown? The fact is that Mr Berry does not even know whether someone like Alan Tripp is or is not associated with the Oak company structure. Vanuatu law makes it illegal to disclose details about the structure of exempt companies.
On his third point this afternoon Mr Berry also tried to suggest that the Queensland TAB had been a competitor with ACTTAB for VITAB's business. He used as the basis of this claim statutory declarations from two of his own officers. The declaration by Mr John Meyer says absolutely nothing. In fact, I think it is worth quoting his statement. He said:
... I asked Dick McIlwain then Chief Executive Officer of the Queensland TAB in what circumstances Queensland would have entered into an arrangement with VITAB Limited. He replied to me with words to the effect that provided the Queensland legislation was amended to permit off-shore betting arrangements, he would have no objections to entering into such an arrangement provided the price was right.
Nor would anybody, Mr Berry; nor should the ACT. If the price is right and the deal is right, we should go for it. That is not the issue. The statement does not indicate that the Queensland TAB was competing with ACTTAB for the VITAB contract; it indicates quite the opposite. It backs our statement that Queensland was not in the running because they had not changed their legislation.
The other evidence Mr Berry produced to support this claim that ACTTAB competed for the deal was a statutory declaration from ACTTAB chief, Mr Philip Neck. Mr Neck said that he asked one of the directors of VITAB, Mr Kolomanski, who told him that the Queensland TAB was in negotiations with VITAB. Neither Mr Neck, Mr Meyer nor Mr Berry bothered to follow up with the Queensland TAB. If they had, they would have found out that Queensland was prevented from tendering for the deal for legislative
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