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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 8 Hansard (26 August) . . Page.. 2476 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

The same company which the Chief Minister describes as being beyond reproach has been highly criticised for its deliberate lack of cooperation with the commission. Commissioner Davison said:

European Pacific -

the Fay Richwhite subsidiary -

from which the winebox documents were sourced, adopted the attitude that it would not assist the Inquiry. It would not make available to it for examination the members of the banking team which had been involved in many of the transactions the Commission wished to investigate. It would not respond to notices requiring production of documents, and it took steps to prevent the Commission obtaining evidence from former employees as were resident in New Zealand and had been subpoenaed to attend by the Commission. Attempts to prevent witnesses being heard, after the Commission had ruled that they do so, were taken to the Court of Appeal and then on to the Privy Council.

The commissioner goes on to describe other attempts to thwart the commission's inquiries, including uncooperative witnesses and corporations challenging claims for documents. This company explored every avenue to avoid examination by the commission. You have to ask yourself the question: Why? These are the people whom the Chief Minister describes as being "of good standing" and beyond reproach. The Chief Minister must have very different standards from the average person in the street.

In summary, the Chief Minister said I should have been censured for criticising corporations that illegally film witnesses at a royal commission and are found to be in contempt of the commission; that are privatisation specialists whose practices have been questioned after they have changed sides to advise the purchaser; that devised schemes to exploit loopholes in tax law to avoid paying millions of dollars in tax; that fought examination by a royal commission in New Zealand by every legal avenue possible; and that have been criticised by the commissioner for being uncooperative and trying to frustrate the commission. This is the corporation and their direct subsidiaries that the Chief Minister employs without any probity checks, and defends as people of good standing when she thinks she can score political points. She is very lucky that there is no censure of her for employing such a company to review the Territory's largest and most important public asset, ACTEW, having not done probity checks beforehand.

MR SPEAKER: The member's time has expired.

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