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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 5 Hansard (5 May) . . Page.. 1343 ..

MR KAINE: It says something about the Minister's state of mind that he drew that conclusion. (Extension of time granted) The point that I was trying to make, Mr Speaker, is that this strange, convoluted, so-called company structure, first of all, seems totally inappropriate for a government contract of only $27m. What is its purpose? What did the Government expect to achieve by setting up this shadowy arrangement about which we know very little even today, although the Chief Minister says it is all very transparent?

Mr Moore: You set it up. You were Assistant Treasurer.

MR KAINE: I did not, Mr Moore. Do not you fall for the Chief Minister's propaganda. I did not set it up. I had nothing to do with it.

Mr Moore: But you were in Cabinet. You were the Assistant Treasurer.

MR KAINE: Mr Speaker, I want to make a point about that. The Chief Minister is very good at drawing on Cabinet procedures and suggesting that I was involved in all sorts of things. I have to say that if she is going to draw on Cabinet processes and come to such conclusions, then I will have no compunction in doing the same thing to refute what she says. There is a thing called Cabinet solidarity and Cabinet confidentiality, but it does not imply that everything that the Chief Minister chose to do was with my agreement. Mr Moore sits in the Cabinet and he clearly does not agree with everything the Chief Minister does. If he can enjoy that privileged position, then I submit so can I.

To get back to the business of the debate, there is one other matter that remains very unclear, and that is the arrangements with the tenants at the stadium. One of the additions in my amendments, which I will move in a minute, has to do with that. Just what arrangements has this shadowy management organisation made with the major tenants? They are the beneficiaries of this, we were told originally. The three sporting codes that play on rectangular ovals were going to be the big beneficiaries. We do not know to what degree they are benefiting. If the Chief Minister thinks this is all so transparent, will she respond to my amendment to Mr Stanhope's motion and put the details of those agreements on the table so that we can see?

Mr Speaker, it is quite clear that the project is totally out of control, at least in the financial sense. It is a matter of grave concern, because the total responsibility for that project in a financial sense is now going to fall upon the taxpayer of the ACT. The Chief Minister can talk about Commonwealth Bank loans as being private sector injection as much as she wants. They simply are not. The total responsibility financially for that project falls on the shoulders of the taxpayers of the ACT the minute the Chief Minister sets into place the financial arrangements which I understand she intends to set in place. It is a loan - nothing more than that. It is borrowing, and the responsibility falls on the taxpayer.

It is time the Government came clean on all aspects of this project. It has been obscured. It has been deliberately obscured and Mr Stanhope is quite correct, as a member of this place, in finally demanding of the Government, regardless of what the Auditor-General might be doing, that they tell us in this place the facts about that project. We are

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