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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 14 Hansard (10 December) . . Page.. 4799 ..

MRS CARNELL (continuing):

It was simply because he misled the Assembly. Even then he continued to say that there was nothing particularly wrong with the deal. Even in his speech just a minute ago, he suggested that somehow the approach of the previous Assembly had not been appropriate. Look at page 137 and see how I reacted at the first indication that there was a problem. Mr Burbidge said that incentive payments to the first punter commenced in October 1995. That was the first one he could find. What did he say about what I did when I found out about incentive payments? He said:

Payments of the incentives continued until February 1997, when ... [the] Chief Minister ... wrote to the Chairman of the Club Mr Norton, expressing the view that funds paid to the Club should not be used to pay rebates whereupon the practice ceased.

At the same time, I approached the Victorian TAB and ran a probity audit over the whole situation. On one side you have a Minister who goes through question time after question time totally refusing to act. On the other side you have a Chief Minister who at the first sign of a problem immediately stops the practice, goes to the Victorian TAB and runs probity audits.

And what happened? On one side the Minister who refused to act ended up with the TAB link being severed because he refused to listen. On the other side the TAB in Victoria entered into a three-year agreement with us, because they accepted that the approach we had taken had been, to quote them, "appropriate, under the circumstances". Mr Berry cannot compare - - -

Ms McRae: It does not wash.

MRS CARNELL: It is actually the reality here - - -

Ms McRae: It does not wash.

MRS CARNELL: Ms McRae was very concerned about interjections when Mr Berry was talking. What happened to the link? The Minister who did not listen, who took rotten advice but would not listen to people who were trying to tell him, ended up with the link being severed. The moment I got any evidence that something that I did not believe was appropriate was happening, we made sure the link was not severed. Not only was the link not severed but a new three-year agreement was put in place.

Mr Speaker, there is another issue here - consistency. I believe we have been consistent the whole way through this issue. We have made sure we have understood the issues involved. Mr Berry made no such attempt. With regard to inconsistency, I think there is a glaring issue with Mr Berry's speech. Mr Berry seems to believe that a debt that a statutory authority has in the ACT is not a debt that the taxpayer has to pay back. He said categorically - - -

Mr Berry: It is a corporation debt.

MRS CARNELL: Mr Speaker, I will follow up on that. Mr Berry said that a debt that a statutory authority has is not a debt that the taxpayer wears.

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