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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 7 Hansard (30 June) . . Page.. 1796 ..

MR QUINLAN (continuing):

Mrs Carnell talked in her speech - a long speech - of other loans and drew them into it. The speech was designed to confuse rather than to clarify. She threw a list of these loans at the Auditor-General during the Estimates Committee hearings. The Auditor-General responded promptly by saying, "No, sorry, Mrs Carnell, they were all okay". So, introducing those into your speech just means that the chain of deception continues into today and into this debate.

We have had illegal acts and we have had several ruses to mask those illegal acts. Overall, we can distil the underlying cause to sublime arrogance and deception. The alternative explanation is blinding, screaming, gob-smacking incompetence - woops, where did that $25m go? On either count, Mrs Carnell should have had the good grace to resign by now.

I give you the third alternative to deception or incompetence: Deception and incompetence. The Bruce Stadium fiasco has got to be one of the most ham-fisted cover-ups of all time - excuse the pun, but a botch-up of Olympic proportions - and it is not what the electors elected this Government for.

Let me return to the progressive deception. Already we know of illegal payments. We know that the Chief Minister's Department was lending money to itself. It tossed around the title Bruce Stadium Redevelopment Authority, a non-existent body that was invented to allow deliberate overexpenditure to appear legitimate as an investment - clearly a deception. Legal opinion furnished by Professor Jack Richardson confirmed that the strategy failed miserably.

I will take a lot of convincing that the public servants that found it necessary to create this device would not have been in touch with the boss. We have all witnessed the high level of information provision during question time and difficult debates. There is obviously support coming up. If you want evidence, just take a roll call of the passing parade in the anteroom today.

We all know of the overnight loan, itself a contrivance and a deception. It is impossible to accept that the need for that dodgy deal, that overnight loan, was not communicated to the Chief Minister. The first defence that we heard in this place was of net appropriations; we cash managed it. That rationalisation, that excuse, came and went fairly quickly. It had to; it did not stand up. However, we should not forget that defence. At one time it was Mrs Carnell's explanation - an explanation made in public, made through the media. If it was a truthful explanation and it was proven unsustainable, what should have followed then was a public admission of a mistake and remedial action. That did not happen immediately. We must assume that the original justification was not a justification at all; therefore, it was an attempt to deceive us. What else?

What was the next excuse. The Chief Minister then took refuge behind the claim that it was a technical breach of the law. That goes close to being the ultimate insult to our intelligence. For months we were given assurance that the Bruce Stadium would involve a maximum contribution of taxpayers' funds of $12.3m, and a commitment to underwriting a loan of another $7m. That $19.3m was the bottom line, time and again stated by the Chief Minister. We are now past $44m and still going, as far as I know. About $25m is the difference. If you tell the world, and the parliament, that you are going to spend or commit the odd $19m and you spend it without signing the petty cash

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