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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 8 Hansard (26 August) . . Page.. 2429 ..

MR SPEAKER: Order! It being 5.00 pm, I propose the question:

That the Assembly do now adjourn.

Mrs Carnell: I require the question to be put forthwith without debate.

Question resolved in the negative.

MRS CARNELL: Fay Richwhite and Associates have not been convicted by any New Zealand court of fraud or tax evasion in relation to any of these transactions. The so-called wine-box inquiry which looked at these claims reported to the New Zealand Parliament earlier this month after an investigation lasting 21/2 years. In summary, the inquiry found no evidence of fraud, Mr Speaker - I will say again "no evidence of fraud" - in any of the transactions and no evidence of any conspiracy by any corporation, including Fay Richwhite, to defraud New Zealand's Inland Revenue Department; in other words, no evidence whatsoever that could sustain the comments made by those two MLAs.

There is no doubt that the statements by Mr Berry and Ms McRae were extremely serious charges. They were serious charges against the company and against the ACT Government. They were made specifically under the protection of parliamentary privilege, because both of these members knew that they were serious charges which, if found baseless - which, of course, they have been, Mr Speaker - would have exposed them to legal action and significant damages if they had been made outside this place. This is supported by the fact that neither Mr Berry nor Ms McRae wished to repeat their statements outside the Assembly when they were challenged to do so.

Mr Speaker, we, as members, have available to us an extraordinary power, which is denied to most of the community, and that is the right of parliamentary privilege. If we use this power to make specific charges against individuals or organisations, we also have a duty to be extremely careful because of the special protection that we, as members, are afforded. But what if we abuse that trust and protection? What if we act recklessly and make statements that we know to be false, Mr Speaker? We deserve to be censured by the Assembly, and indeed by the community, for misusing the trust that has been placed in us.

Mr Berry and Ms McRae recklessly misled this Assembly on two grounds. Firstly, they made statements of fact about a company which were completely and utterly false. Secondly, and most importantly, these MLAs knew these statements to be false at the time they made them to the Assembly, because when they asked their questions on 26 June Mr Berry and Ms McRae knew that the inquiry being conducted into the Cook Islands transactions had not yet been completed and that it had not yet made any

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