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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 14 Hansard (10 December) . . Page.. 4801 ..

MRS CARNELL (continuing):

Mr Speaker, can we afford to have somebody like that as Chief Minister and Treasurer of this Territory if he still does not understand the difference between something that is legal and something that is not, between something that costs $5m and something that costs no dollars but has actually produced dollars? This is something that I suppose at the end of the day the voters of the ACT will decide, but heaven help the ACT if somebody who has so little understanding of quite significant differences becomes Chief Minister.

I also hope that never again in this place do we see parliamentary privilege used to suggest that a public servant who has been found not guilty of anything should be sacked. Forget any of this other debate. That sort of approach, from my perspective, is absolutely unacceptable. Everybody has a right of reply. No public servant should have to wear that sort of an approach.

MR HUMPHRIES (Attorney-General) (11.23): Mr Speaker, I also seek leave to make some comments on the subject.

Leave granted.

MR HUMPHRIES: I thank members. Mr Speaker, I will try to be quite brief, but I think I need to comment on the comments by Mr Berry. Mr Berry, as usual, has left the chamber while this debate is going on. He is prepared to sling some mud but is not prepared to sit down and listen to comments or responses to it. Mr Berry's response has been a classic head-in-the-sand response to a problem which is very severe and which continues to afflict the Territory. We are in here, Mr Berry.

A debt of that size, a debt of almost $6m, is a debt which obviously certain areas of the ACT, including the TAB and taxpayers generally, are going to have to carry for some years to come. It is a very large debt. Mr Berry rises in this place and says on the record that he is sorry for what happened. For that I think he has shown some courage. I think he deserves to be commended for having said that. But he then immediately indicates that there are a series of other people who, in effect, ought to share his blame, to whom the limelight ought to shift immediately in order to fully understand what has occurred in this matter. He blames ACTTAB. ACTTAB are to blame, he says - not just the past ACTTAB board but even the present ACTTAB board. The advisers who advised him at the time are to blame, he says.

Interestingly, Mr Speaker, he does not mention one person in particular who was at the time his senior adviser, who is still his senior personal adviser and who was adversely mentioned by the Pearce inquiry. I am curious why Mr Smeed should resign or be sacked when you have not chosen to sack the person on your own staff who was named adversely by the Pearce inquiry. Why?

Mr Berry: Because Mr Smeed is the one directly organising inducements; that is why.

MR HUMPHRIES: We have already heard about inducements. While you were not here, the Chief Minister explained very adequately that the inducements, under Mr Burbidge's terms of reference and as he explained in his report, were not illegal and did not cost the Territory any money.

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