Page 2007 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 15 June 1994
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The continuance of the VicTAB link was crucial to the future of ACTTAB. It was thus also crucial to the future of ACT racing and the flow of funds to the ACT.
That, of course, is the issue upon which the no-confidence motion against Mr Berry hung. I would like to reiterate a point that Ms Szuty raised. Mr Humphries asked Professor Pearce to find that Mr Berry had, indeed, deliberately misled the Legislative Assembly. I hope that Mr Humphries has learnt a lesson from this. That was an entirely inappropriate thing to do. Determining whether a member of this parliament has misled it is the role of this Assembly and nobody else. We have dealt with that issue; it was not the role of Professor Pearce. Madam Speaker, having dealt with those issues, and having heard the debate today, I would like to conclude by saying that, yes, there was good faith. It was good enough for the board to be fired for its incompetence, and there is a real question about incompetence going much further than the board.
MR BERRY (4.50): It has been interesting, Madam Speaker, to sit here and watch people squirm in the wake of this report. Nobody seems to want to talk too much about the detail of it. They certainly do not want to talk too much about its very important findings because it does put them in a rather awkward and embarrassing position. There are a couple of things I would like to deal with before I go on with my speech. The first is how names have been bandied around this place and further attempts made to blacken personal staff and other people. It is the beginning of the same old tirade. They want to do it again; they want to go through it all again. I think there is some discussion about Mr Bartholomew at paragraph 97 of the report. We heard Mr De Domenico laying into Mr Bartholomew again, further trying to blacken his character. On page 24 of the report Professor Pearce said:
... Mr Bartholomew apparently does not himself have a police record.
Mr De Domenico: That is not true.
MR BERRY: We know that doctored evidence from the Victorian Minister came into the hands of the Liberals opposite and they used it for their own purposes. I saw that Mrs Carnell is at it again as well, because she was waving around a Cabinet-in-confidence document, stating it to be the fount of all facts. Of course, it was not signed by anybody. It has no standing at all. But that is just typical.
A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since Professor Pearce was given his terms of reference to investigate the contract entered into between ACTTAB and VITAB Ltd. It is timely to go back and to look at the terms of reference given to him on 29 March 1994. He was to investigate the following matters:
(a) the circumstances relating to the negotiation of the agreement between ACTTAB and VITAB including:
. the arrangements for VITAB access to the Supertab pool; and
. the advice provided to the Minister for Sport;
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