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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 5 Hansard (5 May) . . Page.. 1334 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

Then who was it that actually got the contract to do the redevelopment? Who are the project managers? It is interesting that CRI Project Management picked up the contract. Those that did the original consulting work then became the ultimate consultants. We have a great interest in the documentation on that.

This motion simply asks the Government to go the full monty. That is what this is about. This is a request of this Government to go the full monty on Bruce Stadium, to table for the information of members of this Assembly the documents relating to the redevelopment of Bruce Stadium. This is the full-monty government now. This is the open and transparent government. This is the Government that will bare all to the Assembly and the people of Canberra.

This motion requests the Government to continue in the vein that it now pretends that it has set upon in its full-monty budget. We want the Government to go the full monty in its revelation of what went on at Bruce Stadium and to clear the air on it. We would like to see the documents. There is no basis on which this Government can seriously refuse members of this Assembly access to all the documents that have been requested on the Bruce Stadium.

MS CARNELL (Chief Minister and Treasurer) (10.53): Mr Speaker, the thing that is quite tragic here is that this motion is just about politics. It has nothing to do with the Bruce Stadium project at all. If it did have anything to do with the project, then why would those opposite not continue down the path that they started on when Mr Quinlan wrote to the Auditor-General asking the Auditor-General to do a full performance audit, something that the Auditor-General had already indicated he was happy to do?

Mr Quinlan: Only in my capacity as chairman of the PAC.

MS CARNELL: Absolutely. We have already had a letter from Mr Quinlan as chairman of the Committee for the Chief Minister's Portfolio, or the PAC, asking the Auditor-General to do a full performance audit. A full performance audit, as we know, includes such things as the financial structure, the total cost of the redevelopment, the design of the redevelopment and contractual arrangements. When Mr Stanhope was making his speech, I was writing down the things that he said this Assembly wanted to assess. According to Mr Stanhope's speech, they covered such things as the financial structure, the total cost of the redevelopment, the design, the contractual arrangements - exactly what Mr Quinlan asked the Auditor-General to do.

Why logically would those opposite now decide that they do not like that approach? Mr Speaker, is it a no-confidence vote in the Auditor-General? Is the Labor Party saying that the Auditor-General cannot be trusted? I have to say that that is a bit of a surprising thing for those opposite to say, because it was not all that long ago that Mr Parkinson was reappointed. That reappointment, of course, went to Mr Quinlan as chair of the committee, and Mr Quinlan said he had absolutely no problems with the reappointment of Mr Parkinson as Auditor-General.

If now those opposite are suggesting that they have no confidence in the Auditor-General, why on earth just a couple of months ago did they reappoint him? Are they questioning his independence? Are they questioning his competence or his office's

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