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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 12 Hansard (13 November) . . Page.. 4115 ..

MR WHITECROSS (continuing):

They are also stinging about something else. They are stinging about the questions that we have been asking this week, because they know that there is a basis for those questions. They know that those questions were not just plucked out of the air. So, they have said, "This is really bad. We are stinging from all these things we are getting from the Labor Party about the events of early this year. We are stinging from the Labor Party's scrutiny of our position on ACTEW. We have to get something back on the Labor Party. We have to try to train the guns back on the Labor Party. How are we going to do it? We have a problem because we do not have anything to throw at them". They were sitting in their offices racking their brains for a couple of days, thinking, "What are we going to do? How are we going to get back at the Labor Party for this attack that they have made on us?".

After a couple of days it finally came to them, Mr Speaker. Mr Hird knew that Mr Berry was in Sydney. So they thought, "Why do we not make up a story that he met with Mr Carr and struck some secret deal to sell ACTEW?". That is pretty interesting, Mr Speaker. But before Mr Berry got anywhere near Sydney the New South Wales Labor Party had already told Mr Carr that he could not sell the New South Wales electricity service. Obviously, they have not been reading the papers and that just passed them by. So, they said, "Let us make up a story". They spent the first couple of days of this week scuttling round the corridors, pushing out this story: "Guess what; someone from the Public Service here heard a story from someone from the Public Service in Sydney that Wayne Berry met with Bob Carr and a secret deal was struck between them to sell ACTEW". It was such a secret deal that Bob Carr told the New South Wales bureaucracy so that the New South Wales bureaucracy could tell the ACT bureaucracy and they could tell Kate Carnell, so that she could get her staff to run round the corridors telling everybody this story and they could come in here today and run this story and everyone would believe it! That is what has happened here.

The fact of the matter is that they are stinging because of the way that they have been put under sustained pressure over their own mistakes, their own secret agendas, their own unwillingness even to tell us in question time today how much money the Government is spending on the business incentive scheme. Even today, Mr Stefaniak could not answer a simple question about whether the reason why the housing arrears have gone down is that he wrote them all off. Mr Speaker, they are under sustained attack from the Labor Party over all these matters. The only way they can get back is by making up a baseless allegation. The Chief Minister does not have the guts to get up in this place and explain how she came by this story. The reason she cannot is that it is fiction, Mr Speaker. It is fiction from beginning to end, made up by the Liberal Party because they were trying to find a way to take the pressure off themselves over their own plans to sell ACTEW.

MR SPEAKER: The member's time, mercifully, has expired.

MR HIRD (3.44): Mr Speaker, I will be supporting Mr Moore's amendment. To stop wasting the time of this house - and its time is valuable - all Mr Berry needs to do is deny that he had a meeting with Mr Carr and discussed the privatisation of ACTEW. It is as simple as that, sir. He needs to rise in his place and just deny it. But he knows full well that it actually did happen. By the fact that he is sitting in his chair and is not moving, he is condoning what it is suspected took place.

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