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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 11 Hansard (26 September) . . Page.. 3428 ..

MR BERRY: I said at the time that one other member of the Government ought to deal with that issue, but Mrs Carnell chose to deal with it.

Mrs Carnell: We were not the Government.

Mr Hird: We were in opposition. As usual, you are wrong, Wayne.

MR BERRY: I think there was a very clear conflict of interest in a member being involved in legislation that could enhance her own business interests. There are a lot of interjections from people on the other side; but one of the most important issues about conflict of interest, and Mr Humphries would know about this, is the longstanding rule of law which determines what is a conflict of interest. That is, if the ordinary person in the street can come to the conclusion or raise the question that there could be a conflict of interest in the behaviour of a particular person, that is usually the test applied to conflict of interest cases.

The other day I raised in this place the issue of a bottle of cough mixture which was marketed as "Kate Carnell's Cough Mixture". I think that clearly points out a conflict of interest. Mrs Carnell said:

Our code of ethics -

referring to the Executive's code of ethics -

requires me to have nothing to do with the day-to-day running of my business ...

But it is quite all right for Mrs Carnell to have her name plastered all over this medication and promote the product as her own. The ordinary person in the street could reasonably come to the conclusion that that particular product had the tick of the Chief Minister and Health Minister in the ACT. I think an ordinary person in the street would reasonably come to the conclusion that there was a conflict of interest.

I will take that one step further and refer again to Mrs Carnell's comment:

Our code of ethics requires me to have nothing to do with the day-to-day running of my business ...

I then turn to page 307 of the Yellow Pages - this is the 1996 edition - and under the heading "Pharmacies" I come to the Red Hill Pharmacy. "Red Hill", it is headed, and it says, "Kate Carnell MLA B.Pharm MPS". Clearly, Mrs Carnell is not at arm's length from the day-to-day operations of her pharmacy. She is, in fact, actively involved in the advertising of her pharmacy using her membership of this Legislative Assembly. Mr Speaker, I take that one step further. Mrs Carnell could say - - -

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