Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 7 Hansard (30 June) . . Page.. 1841 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

a demand is that coming from a Chief Minister who finally had to acknowledge that she had acted unlawfully? She puts that to this place as a demand. We know that she has had to back off from that. I think the response from the majority of members in this place was: "Not on your nelly, Chief Minister". So she had to go away and think again.

In short, the Government's actions, and specifically Mrs Carnell's, have been characterised over a period of nearly two years by secrecy, by excuses and by scapegoating. "It was not my fault, it was Jon Stanhope's fault. It was not my fault, it was Trevor Kaine's fault. He was in the Cabinet at the time we made a decision about this". Finally, she says, "It is not my fault. Some poor, obscure public servant in the Chief Minister's Department did not understand the law". So, at the end of the day, if we are not careful, some public servant is going to carry the can for this because the Chief Minister will not. Through all of this, of course, there is an interlacing of absolute administrative and, dare I say, even political incompetence.

In terms of that last point, just look at the record of the Chief Minister over recent days. She had to have two attempts at amending the Financial Management Act to try to get it to her own satisfaction. She made two attempts, not one. She published an amendment. Then she found that did not work so she had to go back and publish another amendment, and, of course, that did not work either. She did the same thing with the appropriation. She tried to amend that. She had to take it away and come back with a revised amendment because the first one she knew she was not going to get through. So, even in the heat of the moment, she has to go through the process twice, first of all to amend the law, and, secondly, to try to seek an appropriation.

At the end of it all, Mr Speaker, she had to come back to the Assembly at the end of the day anyway, because what she was trying to do was not something that she was going to succeed in. Of course, when she came back she said, essentially, "I'm putting everything on the table now. I want you to know everything". (Extension of time granted) "I want to tell you everything. I'll come clean. I'm guilty. I did it. I'm sorry. It's all fine, and I'd like you to put these amendments through. I'm putting all the facts on the table".

Well, as I indicated a little while ago, Mr Speaker, the document circulated secretly yesterday, or privately to a couple of privileged journalists, not to the members of this place, contains information that the Chief Minister has never told us, not even today, and it has to do with two things. It has to do firstly with the total cost of the project. It is now, we understand, $44m. Anybody who read the Canberra Times today would have got that figure, so there is confirmation that that is now the figure, $44m. The other thing is that in terms of financing this money there is a loan from the Commonwealth Bank of $10.3m. I recall that only about three or four weeks ago the Chief Minister complained that the Leader of the Opposition had torpedoed the loan from the Commonwealth Bank and it was not going ahead. According to this document it did go ahead. How come the Chief Minister did not come back and tell us that? We are back to the old openness and transparency, if you can believe it.

Now, Mr Speaker, to come to the three independent legal opinions about the Chief Minister's actions, whichever way you read these legal opinions, all three jointly and separately come to the inescapable conclusion that the Chief Minister, and possibly certain senior public servants, have committed a series of unlawful acts. These are facts.

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .