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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 3 Hansard (28 May) . . Page.. 764 ..

Ms Carnell: It was not an interjection. I answered a question.

MR STANHOPE: It will be in Hansard. The Chief Minister's response today is very telling. Irrespective of the fact that this particular contract has failed, she says, "We are going to do it anyway", thereby covering up the fact that we have expended $140,000 on the project and we now need some process for actually disguising the fact that Mr Whitcombe has run up $140,000 in legitimate costs. This is an outrageous episode. Actually, I do not think that the motion Mr Corbell is proposing is strong enough, but I urge members to support it in any event.

MR HUMPHRIES (Attorney-General, Minister for Justice and Community Safety and Minister Assisting the Treasurer) (5.15): Members of the Labor Party have systematically, over the last few weeks, engaged in a tactic which is built partly on their own deliberate ignorance of what is going on here - and I use the word "deliberate" quite deliberately - and partly on a very facile misunderstanding of what information has been placed before them in this chamber. They have come to this place each day with questions on the Hall/Kinlyside matter. They have asked, as the Speaker has indicated, at least 22 separate questions on the Hall/Kinlyside matter over the last two or three weeks.

Mr Corbell: And we are yet to get a decent answer to one of them.

MR HUMPHRIES: We have not answered one of them, Mr Corbell said. I am glad that Mr Corbell made that interjection, because I want to illustrate the tactic they are using by reference to a question that they did ask the other day. Mr Berry, on 21 May, asked this question:

Mr Speaker, with respect to the rural residential development at Hall, can the Chief Minister clarify what blocks of land the Government understood the Bolton family held leases for prior to 15 May 1998 and what were the terms of those leases?

That was a very simple question - what blocks and what were the terms of the leases. As expected, as the Chief Minister was attempting to answer that question, we had points of order, we had interjections, we had catcalling from the Opposition, and then Mr Berry rose to say:

Mr Speaker, the Chief Minister did not seem to be able to answer the question. The question was about the blocks of land the Government understood the Bolton family to hold leases for.

And it went on for several pages. Let us look at what the Chief Minister actually said in response to that question. Mr Corbell has said that we did not answer any questions.

Mr Corbell: No, I did not say that, and you know that I did not say that.

MR HUMPHRIES: Adequately, appropriately, or something like that.

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