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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 6 Hansard (3 September) . . Page.. 1907 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

happened was that the Chief Minister, the chief executive officer of the Department of Urban Services and our friend, Mr Ian Knop, who is chairman of the Hotel School and also the principal of a company called Profile Paul Ray Berndtson, were present at an auction that was conducted in Sydney. It was for a charity, and I have no doubt it was for a very worthy charity. I understand that Mr Knop bid, and won, for the use of the two Woodies in what was going to be a practice tennis game, where the winner of the auction could practise tennis with the two Woodies.

Mr Knop, having bid for this and won it, decided that he did not want to do that and would give it to Canberra. Mr Speaker, if he wanted to do that, I guess that is fine; we do not have any particular problem with that. We then discovered that one of the other people who were present at the auction that evening, the chief executive officer of the Department of Urban Offices, was somehow involved in a process which achieved funding from ACT Forests and Environment ACT - two agencies of his department - to sponsor this tennis game which was being put on by the Canberra Tourism and Events Corporation.

Mr Speaker, this was a bizarre and completely inappropriate waste of the Canberra community's money. If there is one thing I can say about the Estimates Committee process it is that it is meant to look at whether or not the Government is spending its money appropriately, wisely and prudently. None of those things apply here. How can this Government justify one agency which is already running under significant financial pressure and having problems in the employment area, and another agency which has barely enough resources to manage Canberra Nature Park, Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve, Namadgi National Park and all the other functions that it has to undertake, doing this? How can those two agencies that are cash-strapped and are finding it difficult to meet their core objectives spend money on a tennis game just because it has the Woodies, and Woodies have something to do with trees? It is an absurd suggestion. It is a farcical suggestion.

Why was this done? I guess in many ways we will never know, but you can draw a link between the people who were at the auction, the dinner - the Chief Minister, Mr Knop and Mr Gilmour. Somehow all these things connect when you look at who ended up hosting the event in Canberra - the Canberra Tourism and Events Corporation, under the Chief Minister's portfolio. I note that Mr Knop is a member of one of the boards of CTEC. Who sponsors it? It is sponsored by Environment ACT and ACT Forests. And who is responsible for that department? Under the Minister, it is his chief executive officer, Mr Gilmour. This is farcical in the extreme.

If this is the sort of activity that this Government thinks is appropriate it is no wonder there is a growing anger in the community about the arrogance of this Government. This Government thinks that it can get away with anything. Thank goodness for the estimates process. Thank goodness we were able to isolate and highlight this enormous and absurd waste of money. For a government, $6,000 or $10,000 may not be a lot of money, but for the ordinary ratepayer it is. If this Government has lost an understanding of that, it is no wonder the community perceives it as arrogant and out of touch.

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