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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 8 Hansard (26 August) . . Page.. 2434 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

Instead of my colleague and I being censured for raising these allegations about Fay Richwhite, we should be congratulated for bringing to the attention of the Government and the Assembly the fact that the Chief Minister had no idea that the company she had employed to review ACTEW - the Territory's largest public asset - was the subject of a royal commission in New Zealand. That was the point that we raised. Our questions in the last sitting were centred on this Government's administration of contracts and consultants.

We have seen the results of their cowboy style of management, and the Fay Richwhite contract cuts to the heart of this; no question. What you were doing was employing to review our most important asset people whose character was under a big question mark as a result of the commission. Nobody would employ somebody in that context. In particular, they were fined $15,000 for spying on a politician over there. It is not as if this mob has a character which is as pure as the driven snow. What the commission did find was that there was no illegality in respect of their tax arrangements. But that does not remove the point that some of these arrangements are rorts.

Yet the Government is trying to censure me and not the Chief Minister, who had no idea that the consultants employed by her to delve into ACTEW's books were the subject of a royal commission. She did not have a clue. She had no idea that they were involved in unethical tax rorts - - -

Mrs Carnell: You just said that they were not.

MR BERRY: No.

Mrs Carnell: You just withdrew any - - -

MR BERRY: No. Let me make it clear. I said that it may have been presumptuous of me to have described the dealings of Fay Richwhite as fraudulent, but the question was on foot in the royal commission. There is no question about that. What I have said is that the Government had no idea that they were involved in unethical tax rorts - whether they were found to be legal or not. It had no idea that this company had been found to be in contempt of the commission for filming witnesses giving evidence. It had no idea of the series of allegations about this company's dealings with publicly-owned assets.

These allegations and facts are well documented in both the New Zealand and Australian media, in magazine and journal articles and even in books. Several television documentaries have explored and examined the dealings of this company and the allegations that it advises on the sale of public assets, only to be heavily involved in the purchase of the same assets. Yet the Chief Minister was oblivious to all of these allegations and facts. The question Labor continually asked in the last Assembly sitting was, "Did the Chief Minister know?". That is the point - - -

Mrs Carnell: Mr Speaker, on a point of order: Is there any relevance to the motion here?

MR SPEAKER: I will uphold that point of order. Come back to the point.

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