Page 1993 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 15 June 1994
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
He also said:
What was not adverted to by any of these parties was that a private TAB, not being subject to the obligations to provide revenue to a government or a racing industry, will always be able to offer better incentives to punters than a Government TAB. This fact alone should have caused ACTTAB to pause before entering into the VITAB contract. This matter is pursued further below in the context of the merits of the VITAB agreement.
That is a point that the Leader of the Opposition has made many times in the Assembly in our discussions of this particular issue. The section I have just described is followed by an extensive section of the report which is headed "Merits of VITAB Agreement". It deals with a number of issues - the subject matter of the agreement, the parties with whom contracting was occurring, price, obligations assumed, and outcomes. Professor Pearce speaks eloquently in the report about the significance of the ACTTAB link with the Victorian superpool, and I would like to spend some time on this particular issue. He said:
Continuing access to the VicTAB pool or to a pool of an equivalent size was the very nub of the agreement with VITAB. VITAB would not have entered into the contract if access could not have been guaranteed.
I referred to the significance of this link in my speech to the Assembly on 12 April. I would like to remind members of a couple of things that I said on that occasion. I said to the Assembly:
... I have also been back very thoroughly over the relevant uncorrected proof transcript of the Estimates Committee hearings of last year, in which both the Minister and Mr Neck, the chief executive officer of ACTTAB, talked quite extensively about the importance of ACTTAB being linked to the Victorian TAB superpool. It was the impression of members who attended that committee hearing that that link was of considerable importance to the ACT and certainly that the ACT stood to gain a significant standing in terms of the return the ACT could secure in the future by being linked to the Victorian superpool.
I also said:
Part of the context of the VITAB-ACTTAB contract is most definitely the contract between ACTTAB and VicTAB. To me, the VITAB-ACTTAB contract took place because of ACTTAB's involvement with the Victorian TAB superpool. I do not think there is any getting away from that.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .