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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 12 Hansard (21 November) . . Page.. 4065 ..

Mr Berry: Not for our senior executives.

MRS CARNELL: Interestingly, you did have chief executives driving non-standard, fully imported vehicles, Mr Berry. In fact, you might ask Ms Follett what the previous Under Treasurer drove when he was in that particular job. You also might be interested to know the numbers of vehicles we have. We have 54 Toyota Landcruisers. We had Subaru DL105s in the fleet until early 1995. I think we sold the last one of those this year, Mr Berry, so they were very much in the fleet when you were in government.

Mr Wood: What were they used for?

MRS CARNELL: That was in about 1994-95. We have 20 Toyota Taragos, 11 Holden Rodeos, one Pajero, and the list goes on. There are significant numbers of non-standard vehicles. In fact, if we are looking at the fully imported line of vehicles, Mr Berry would also be aware, of course, that the ACT Government uses a significant number of Ford Lasers and Hyundai Excels. In fact, we have lots of them - or we used to have lots of them. Both are fully imported.

Before people get carried away making allegations, I think it is important to look for the reality of the situation. Again, the reality is that we have quite a number of four-wheel-drives in our system. We have had senior executives and chief executives driving non-standard, fully imported cars in the past under the previous Government. I think it is acceptable to make comments only when you have the facts, and not to make statements that are aimed at just having a go at one particular public servant. We can see that there are lots of those vehicles in the fleet. There are no recommendations along those lines in the report. The Government supported all of the recommendations except one, and I think I have explained that that information will be available. We believe that the Estimates Committee did a very good job this year. We believe that Ms McRae did a good job as chair. I think the Government has responded very positively to the report.

MR BERRY (11.07): I am glad Mrs Carnell tried to obfuscate on the issue of fully imported motor cars, because now I will give her the facts as provided to me by Mr De Domenico. Your approach, of course, was to try to create the old smoke and mirrors trick again by implying that, because there are other fully imported vehicles in use in the Public Service, that excuses what has happened in the case of the chief executive officer. None of them are relevant to the circumstances which were set out in an answer to a question which was given to me by Mr De Domenico. You say that this matter was not mentioned in the report of the Estimates Committee. It could not have been mentioned in the report, because these answers did not arrive until after the report had been published. That is the point that I was making in relation to the response to questions. When we look at the document, the real issue that arises is that Mr Walker was - - -

Mrs Carnell: It is interesting that you can debate a budget and spend the whole time talking about one car.

MR BERRY: You had a shot.

Mrs Carnell: Excuse me. You started it.

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