Page 659 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 12 April 1994
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MRS CARNELL: Not from the people who put bets via agents, Mr Berry. Point No. 5 states:
VITAB will not directly solicit betting investments from existing VicTAB or ACT/TAB customers. VITAB cannot guarantee that existing customers will not bet with VITAB, for reasons stated in Item 2.
The reasons stated in item 2 are that they cannot identify who is actually betting with them. Madam Speaker, these are categorical statements by VITAB itself, before it signed the deal with ACTTAB, that it would accept bets from existing Australian TAB punters. Yet the Minister has touted VITAB's letter of 23 November, after the contract with ACTTAB was signed, as an absolute watertight assurance that VITAB would not be accepting bets from Australian residents or poaching TAB customers.
Earlier today I tabled two legal opinions that indicate that this letter provided by VITAB on 23 November was not worth the paper it was written on. The statements quoted from VITAB's letter in August show definitely that VITAB was always intending to get amongst Australian punters. How can the Minister wave around VITAB's letter of 23 November as an ironclad guarantee that guards against inducements? Yet he chooses to ignore VITAB's earlier letter in August, when it said that it would be accepting bets from Australians.
If VITAB sent this letter to ACTTAB in August, before the contract was signed, would this not have triggered the thought in the Government's mind that some form of protection against the inducements was needed? Instead, it was not until November, after the contract had been signed and the Opposition had begun to ask questions, that Mr Berry sought information from VITAB. There can be no other conclusion drawn from this than that the Minister has misled the Assembly by repeatedly claiming that VITAB's November letter stops any chance of inducements. The earlier letter in August shows that this was not the case.
I want to mention in passing Mr Berry's remarks today about a letter from the Auditor-General to the Opposition relating to the VITAB agreement. I just want to make one point known to this Assembly. The Minister, in a vain attempt to accuse me and Mr De Domenico of withholding information, has got himself into hot water again. On 22 March the Minister was asked on ABC radio whether he had written to the Auditor-General himself and requested a copy of the letter to the Opposition. The Minister replied that he was considering his position. The fact is that when he made this statement Mr Berry had already written to the Auditor-General, and he had been told point-blank that the letter was audit-in-confidence and that the Auditor-General would not release it. It was a pretty cheap shot that backfired.
Mr Berry: Table the letter.
MRS CARNELL: We will table the letter if you give us the contract. Deal? Okay, no deal.
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