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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 5 Hansard (5 May) . . Page.. 1349 ..

Mr Berry: A scandal.

MR SPEAKER: Order! You will have the opportunity to participate if you are still here.

MR HUMPHRIES: I ask members to listen carefully to what Mr Berry has just said. He has repeated the accusation of scandal. I ask members to look at the documents I have just tabled and see that there is no material difference between what was done then and what is being done now in respect of this matter. The fact of the matter is that the process being used here did not involve undisclosed financial arrangements. They were put on the table fully and comprehensively in such a way as to provide full disclosure on those matters. It is the same section, except that the legislation is different. The earlier one was repealed but replaced by the Financial Arrangement Act.

Mr Berry: We would like to see the documents.

MR SPEAKER: They have just been tabled, Mr Berry, if you were listening.

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, I want to correct a couple of things that were said in the course of this debate. The Government is happy to put these documents on the table and to have them discussed, but there are a number of problems with some of the documents.

In a little while I will come back to two amendments I will be moving. I want to come first to a comment made by Mr Kaine in this debate. He attacked the details of the financing arrangement and said they were a scandal. Let me put on record again that Mr Kaine was a member of the Government, a member of the Cabinet indeed - he was Assistant Treasurer and was present at the meeting of Cabinet - when the financing arrangement was settled upon in December of 1997. He was there. Mr Kaine, in response to an interjection from Mr Moore in the course of the debate today, made the comment that he did not agree with everything the Chief Minister did and said, "You would not either". That is axiomatic. No-one ever agrees entirely with anybody else in any situation.

The question here is not whether Mr Kaine was rolled by the Chief Minister or by Cabinet on this issue. The question is whether Mr Kaine made any attempt to dissent from the view which was put forward in the Cabinet submission. I have spoken to members who were present at that Cabinet meeting, and our recollection is uniformly the same. Mr Kaine - and the minutes of the Cabinet meeting disclose this very clearly - made not one peep of objection to the process that was put forward in the submission at the Cabinet meeting in December 1997. Mr Kaine, to the best observation of anybody who would have been sitting around that table, fully endorsed and supported the process which was being used at the time. We are entitled to assume that, because he raised not one peep of concern or objection about the process. To say, as he did, that he did not agree with everything the Chief Minister did implies that he was rolled by Cabinet and that he dissented from the Cabinet view, when in fact that is simply not true. Mr Kaine can come back in here and deny it if he wishes but the Cabinet minutes - - -

Mr Corbell: So much for Cabinet-in-confidence.

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