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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 5 Hansard (25 August) . . Page.. 1202 ..

Mr Humphries: Which page?

MR STANHOPE: Page 765. He said:

The Chief Minister ... made reference to Mr Whitcombe, because they were the block numbers of the three leases he brought in to the Chief Minister's office and put on her table. That was a complete and categorical answer to that question, Mr Corbell.

Mr Wood: What date was that?

MR STANHOPE: That was on 28 May. I can quote a number of other references the same. We are talking here about the physical leases. There are references scattered throughout Hansard. On 19 May, in answer to a question, Mrs Carnell said, "He had the documents in his hand". On 21 May Mrs Carnell said:

Mr Speaker, as I said earlier, when Mr Whitcombe came to see the Government, he came with three leases - actually, with the physical leases.

She went on:

The block numbers were 629, 495 and, I think, 630. They were the three block numbers that Mr Whitcombe actually held the physical leases for, Mr Speaker.

There is absolutely no basis on which one can say there is any confusion in those statements by the Chief Minister about whether we are talking here about leases or whether we are talking about blocks. Mr Humphries said the same, and it goes on. We can refer to what I now regard as almost the infamous evidence at estimates - it is infamous - of Mr Lilley.

Ms Carnell: You cannot censure us for what Mr Lilley says.

MR STANHOPE: No, you were there. Mr Lilley was sitting at your right hand. Mr Lilley, the Under Treasurer, was sitting in estimates at the right hand of the Chief Minister. It probably is relevant that I do read out some of that evidence and Mrs Carnell's interjections during the evidence. I can go on and on through the transcript quoting the answers that Mrs Carnell gave but I do not have the time. I will go through just one section of the evidence at estimates. I will just give a truncated version. I asked Mrs Carnell why no officer undertook a title search to see who owned the land and Mr Morgan interjected to say:

Well, at the time the proponent did provide the physical evidence of those documents.

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