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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 5 Hansard (25 August) . . Page.. 1293 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

Dot point 6 reads:

Rural residential study

Dot point 7 says:

ACT Sub-Regional Planning Strategy

rural residential nodes identified in the subregion ...

no rural residential node identified in the ACT

Strategy never considered rural residential in the ACT as it was not an issue for the Territory.

Mr Speaker, these are the plans of the company set up between the Government and Mr Whitcombe to progress this development, and they show clearly that from the very beginning they were aware that there was a page full of major potential criticisms of this project.

Ms Carnell: Sorry, what date was that? What date - 4 May? From the beginning? Are you lying?

MR CORBELL: It was 4 May 1998. Mr Speaker - - -

Ms Carnell: The 4th of May was two days or three days before we terminated.

MR CORBELL: What this clearly shows, Mr Speaker, is that the Government were aware from the beginning that this deal was shonky, that this deal was not something that they could justify. For that reason, when this deal broke, they made up an excuse to justify the deal. That is what they did. What was the excuse, Mr Speaker? The excuse was: "Mr Whitcombe brought three blocks of land to it". When the deal broke, when it was reported in the newspaper and they knew they could not justify it, because they had been able to work out all the reasons themselves, they said the deal was off because Mr Whitcombe did not bring three leases to the table. That is what they have said. That reason is false. That reason never existed. The justification for that deal never existed. It was not in any of the documents that we have received under the FOI request. It was not a condition of entering into the deal. It was never a condition of entering into the deal, so it could not be a reason for getting out of the deal. That is where this Government have misled the Assembly. That is where they have almost certainly deliberately misled this Assembly.

But if you have some doubt that it is not deliberate, you have to ask yourselves why it took three months of questioning in this place for the Government to admit they had made a mistake. Day after day they stood over there and stonewalled. They refused to answer and they tried to make it into a bit of a joke, did they not, Mr Rugendyke? They tried to say that this was not an issue that the Opposition could keep questioning about.

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