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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 5 Hansard (25 August) . . Page.. 1288 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

Mr Speaker, if it is true that we can impute this knowledge to the Government, that is, the Ministers, because a senior public servant knew, the Assembly has the satisfaction of knowing that 24 hours later on the next sitting day - 18 May was not a sitting day - the Chief Minister came into the house and put on the record immediately what the state of play was, indicating also at that time that the process was not going to proceed with Mr Whitcombe as the preferred proponent. That occurred the very next day. If Mr Stanhope was quoting a different document, some other document of 18 May, the same argument precisely applies. A senior public servant knew about it on 18 May, and that is why the Chief Minister came into the house the very next day and told the house that the proposal was not proceeding and that there were not three leases; there was only one.

Mr Speaker, what more can a responsible parliament expect of a responsible government? To put it another way, where is the evidence that there was any information against which the Government recklessly decided to proceed with the development which was ill fated? Where is that evidence? In this debate it has not been presented. To the best that I can deduce, the argument has been that senior public servants found out about it and the Government should have known. The Government did know, 24 hours later, and when it did know it came to this house and told the house. Mr Speaker, if this censure motion passes today it will unalterably and quite damagingly affect the standard of responsibility to this place, because if members of any government, indeed any member of the house - this applies to us all - are expected to tell the truth to the house at all times, it ought to be a system which comes with both incentives and disincentives; disincentives in that members who fail to honour that obligation will be censured, but incentives to encourage members who realise they have misled inadvertently to come to the house and put their mistake on the record at the first opportunity. Mr Speaker, that is what has happened in this particular case.

Mr Corbell: Nonsense.

MR HUMPHRIES: That is what has happened.

Mr Corbell: Absolute nonsense.

MR HUMPHRIES: Where is your proof, Mr Corbell? Where is the evidence that we had information upon which we did not act or on which we acted recklessly? Where is that information? Mr Speaker, the Opposition has an obligation to discharge and that obligation is to show that there was information that the Government had which it ignored. It is perfectly true, and I admit this very openly in this place, that as Minister for Planning last year I did receive advice from PALM to suggest we should proceed by way of an open tender to release this land. That advice came to me from PALM. I make no bones about the fact that PALM's view was that we probably should not deal with Mr Whitcombe by himself; we should have an open tendering process. That information is already on the public record, so I am not disclosing anything particularly exciting or new in that respect.

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