Page 2623 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 24 August 1994
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One of the requirements of those laws is that ACTTAB must seek the approval of the relevant Minister to enter into contracts beyond a certain value. In the case of the contract with VITAB they did so; but, as the Pearce report clearly shows, the advice to the Minister was inadequate. It is simply not true to say that the Government decided to enter into a contract.
Mr De Domenico: Why do you not sack the people who gave him the advice - all of them?
MS FOLLETT: I thought we had done very well on that score, Mr De Domenico. One Minister, Mr Deputy Speaker, approved a proposal recommended to him by the former ACTTAB management board and by departmental advisers. Those facts were clearly established by the Pearce inquiry. Only the Liberals would try to deny those facts or to misinterpret them.
I am not here to pretend, Mr Deputy Speaker, that the ACTTAB contract with VITAB was a success. With the benefit of hindsight we know that it was not. The circumstances in which that contract was negotiated and the former Minister's involvement in it were investigated thoroughly by a public inquiry. The findings of that inquiry were nothing like the nonsense that has been spouted here today by the Leader of the Opposition. The Pearce inquiry found that ACTTAB negotiated the VITAB contract in direct competition with the soon to be privatised VicTAB, with whom they had a contract allowing access to the VicTAB superpool. Given that that superpool contract could be terminated without cause, the contract with VITAB was indeed tempting fate, and the Pearce inquiry showed that very clearly. Professor Pearce showed that there was a lack of care and follow-up by ACTTAB, and to a lesser extent by officers of the Department of the Environment, Land and Planning.
The Pearce inquiry looked quite specifically at the issues of ministerial propriety and ministerial responsibility, and I will quote to you, again, the findings from that inquiry. Professor Pearce said this:
Mr Berry, his Departmental officers, ACTTAB officials and the various advisers to these parties acted in good faith throughout the negotiations leading to the entry by ACTTAB into the contract with VITAB.
Further on - you ought to listen to this - he said:
Mr Berry acted properly in his role as Minister in relation to the VITAB contract but was not well advised.
That is exactly what I said. This is a very different picture from the one that the Opposition seeks to present.
Two important facts have emerged from the welter of claims, accusations and innuendo which have come from the Liberals in recent months. The first of these is that not one of the wild allegations that have been made by the Liberal Party, and by Mrs Carnell, in particular, has been proved to be correct. If we are to assess Mrs Carnell's own VITAB performance, we can see that she has been swept along without thinking carefully about
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