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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 10 Hansard (24 November) . . Page.. 2757 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

I said I was presented with three documents, of which one was a lease for three blocks.

So, that was the Government's explanation. That was Mr Lilley's explanation.

Mr Speaker, it became very apparent to most members of the Estimates Committee that what Mr Lilley said was wrong again. It was, Mr Speaker, misleading. It was, quite clearly, misleading. Why was it misleading? It was misleading because the document Mr Lilley saw, as provided under an FOI request, was for a lease over one block. Not three blocks; one block: Block 318 of the District of Gungahlin. Mr Lilley never saw a lease over three blocks because there never was one. This, Mr Speaker, strikes at the heart of why we have raised this concern and it strikes at the heart of how this Government does business and how this Government politicises the ACT government service, because Mr Lilley was in there defending the political actions of his Minister. That is what he was doing and he was doing it in a highly political way. He was doing it to suit the political ends of this Government and he has been caught out. The Government never saw a document which was for one lease over three blocks. They saw a document for one lease over one block and it was in the FOI request, it was in the material that this Government provided.

Where they may be a little bit confused is with the subsequent attachments to this lease which they discovered later, which were for block withdrawals, withdrawals of land from the original lease. There were two withdrawals at separate periods of time; so, in the end, there were three parcels of land. Of course, in looking at the three parcels of land the Government would have realised again that two of those parcels of land were withdrawals from a lease. They were not extra bits of blocks but were part of the lease; they were withdrawals from the lease.

Again, Mr Speaker, the Estimates Committee has been grievously misled. It is that simple. There was no apology, no straightforward coming out with an explanation. It had to be dragged out of the Government and a senior official of this Government because they knew that they had nothing to back up their claim to enter into the Hall/Kinlyside agreement. They had nothing at all. Mr Speaker, that is quite clear, and that is why this Estimates Committee has made this very serious recommendation. This Government and a number of officials - I have highlighted one - have grievously misled estimates committees.

Members may think that that is not a big deal. Members may think that that is simply a part of the process, that that is what happens in a political debate. But there is something higher at stake here, that is, the ability of a parliament to effectively scrutinise the activities of an executive. What we are having at the moment is public officials being dragged into a political debate by a government. I say that very clearly, because Ministers can say when they will answer a question and when a public servant will answer a question. Quite clearly, Ministers can say, "I will take that question. I will answer it. It is not appropriate for public servants to answer that question". But that is not what the other side of the house does. That is not what they do. They set the public servants up.

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