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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 5 Hansard (25 August) . . Page.. 1296 ..

Mr Moore: Hillview or Hillside?

MS CARNELL: Hillview. All of the questions, apart from the one from Ms Horodny in September, were after we terminated the agreement. Mr Corbell has just raved on for a very long period of time about how "that side of the house", throughout the intensive questioning, just continued to hold the line that Mr Whitcombe had all of the leases. He said that finally they forced us to admit that Mr Whitcombe did not have all of the leases. Wrong. The first question was on 19 May. When did we terminate? It was 18 May, Mr Speaker. The only person who asked a question before that, certainly on my advice here, is Ms Horodny, in September. There were questions on 19 May, 20 May, 21 May, 26 May, 27 May, 28 May and, I think, 23 June. The fact is that by then the Government had made it quite clear that the agreement had been terminated at that stage; that Mr Whitcombe and the Government had both agreed that he did not bring all of the leases to the Assembly. If we are looking at embellishment of the truth here, we may have just heard it from Mr Corbell.

Mr Speaker, I think it is important to get back to basics. This morning, certainly Mr Stanhope, but I think others, made the point that the reason that we were being censured was that they could not believe that we entered an agreement with Derek Whitcombe because he brought Hillview. He could not accept that we believed that the preliminary agreement was based upon the fact that Mr Whitcombe brought Hillview in total to the table.

Mr Stanhope: Something of no value.

MS CARNELL: Now they are saying that that is not the issue; it is the fact that it was of no value, not the fact that Mr Whitcombe brought all of Hillview. The fact is that those on the crossbenches and the Government, and actually those opposite, know that Mr Whitcombe did believe he was bringing all of Hillview. The fact is that there has been documentary - - -

Mr Stanhope: That is the point. He believed it and you should have known better.

MS CARNELL: Sorry. No, you did not say that this morning. You said that we knew. Mr Speaker, he said that we knew. Now they are saying something else. This morning they said categorically that the reason we were being censured was that when we signed the preliminary agreement Mr Humphries and I knew that Derek Whitcombe did not bring with him all of Hillview. We have shown categorically that that is not the case. In fact, I think just about everyone in this place has now seen the Cabinet decision that was made as a result of that, because obviously somebody has leaked it on more than one occasion.

Mr Moore: Who do you think leaked it?

MS CARNELL: I cannot really imagine. Anyway, we will not get into who might have leaked it.

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