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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 14 Hansard (11 December) . . Page.. 5008 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

thought that somebody else was doing it. That, of course, is no excuse at the end of the day for the fact that those probity tests were not undertaken. Had they been done the deception may well have been brought to light and we might never have suffered the problems that we have suffered since. Not only was there a deliberate deception, but there seems to have been some incompetence, some lack of skill, some lack of understanding at the ACTTAB end of what was going on around them. ACTTAB was, we are told, prepared to accept, on numerous occasions, assurances from VITAB without further investigation. VITAB repeatedly said that everything was okay, and we seem to have accepted that as being the truth.

Madam Deputy Speaker, I think it is a sad and sorry affair. Some of the employees of ACTTAB seem to have been driven by overenthusiasm, I suspect. The report goes at some length to make this point about the most criticised of the members, Mr Neck, in connection with the affair:

... there is no direct evidence of any corrupt involvement by Mr Neck in the VITAB scheme.

I can assume only that there was a certain enthusiasm about all of this that drove people to go too far and to neglect their duties in the process.

As a result of all of this the Minister of the day has suffered severely. He has expressed his regret that all this has happened, but I think it is a salutary lesson for all of us that in our day-to-day business we have to be so very meticulous, and we have to make sure that our advisers are meticulous. It is so very easy for any one of us to accept advice from people we trust and in whose competence we believe and on whom we rely, and, at the end of the day, we can be led astray. I would hope that not only has Mr Berry learnt something from the experience, but also that the rest of us who hold positions of authority and responsibility do not fail to learn from the lessons of this experience. I would hope that we are not in the position, at some future time, of again having to pay somebody money out of taxpayers' reserves which the recipients should not receive.

MR MOORE (8.38): Madam Deputy Speaker, on 12 April 1994 I, along with my colleague Helen Szuty, made one of the most difficult decisions that I have ever made in my 81/2 years in this Assembly and that was to support a no-confidence motion moved against Mr Berry for misleading the Assembly. Mr Burbidge, in his report, has made it even clearer to me that, when Mr Berry was telling this Assembly that everything was okay, it clearly was not. It has verified for me my decision on that day.

MRS CARNELL (Chief Minister) (8.39), in reply: There are only a couple of things I would like to say because it is late and it is the last sitting day of this parliament. There are a couple of things that I think it is essential to say on this issue. Yes, it has caused an enormous amount of work, and an enormous amount of pain, suffering and difficulty for lots of people. It has also meant that a lot of people who did not deserve to profit have profited.

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