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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 3 Hansard (9 April) . . Page.. 759 ..

MR WHITECROSS (continuing):

Let us start at the beginning here, Mr Speaker. What is conflict of interest? Conflict of interest, according to the Chief Minister, is direct financial benefit. Mr Speaker, I do not receive any direct financial benefit from any club. I am a member of a number of clubs, but I receive no direct financial benefit from any club. That is simply the case. I receive not one cent personally from any club. That is the case with all my parliamentary colleagues. So, in terms of direct financial benefit, Mr Speaker, the Government does not have a leg to stand on.

What do the standing orders say about this, Mr Speaker? What do the standing orders say about the kind of conflict of interest which might preclude you from voting? The standing orders talk about direct or indirect interest in a contract with the Territory. If you have a direct or indirect interest with people who are recipients of taxpayers' money under a contract with the Territory, then that ought to be precluding you from a vote and the Assembly can direct you to stand down from the vote. That is the principle that has been established in the standing orders.

I notice that Mrs Carnell has not had the guts to come in here today and propose an amendment to the standing orders which says that anybody who receives a donation to their political campaign or their political party's campaign should be able to be directed to or should exclude themselves from debate on an issue. Mrs Carnell has not done that, and she has not done it for one reason, Mr Speaker, and that is that she cannot live with the consequences of that. She wants to make one rule for the Labor Party and another rule for herself. She wants to exclude the Labor Party from this debate and to score political points off the Labor Party, but she does not want that rule to apply to her. She does not want that rule to apply to her, Mr Speaker, so that is why she will not amend the standing orders. That is why she wants to create a special rule just for us, just for the Labor Party. Mr Speaker, even the factual basis of the motion - that we receive a substantial financial benefit - is incorrect. We do not receive any substantial financial benefit. The factual basis of the motion is simply wrong.

Mr Speaker, let us talk about where this might go if the Government pursues this. Over the two years that Mrs Carnell has been talking about in her media releases the Liberal Party received over $1m in contributions from a whole range of sources. The principle that the Liberal Party wants to establish is that, if you have received a contribution to your political campaign from somewhere, then that should preclude you from voting on issues where those donors have interests. Mr Speaker, the Liberal Party received a million dollars in donations. Is the Liberal Party saying that they are not going to vote on any issue where the interests of their donors are affected?

Let us look at some of the sources of those funds. They have received over $200,000 from their property investments. They own a commercial property in Canberra and they rent it out. They receive over $200,000 in rents from that property. Are they saying that, as a commercial property owner in Canberra, as someone with an interest in the commercial property sector in Canberra, they should be precluded from votes on issues which affect the interests of their commercial property?

Mr Humphries: That particular property, yes.

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