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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 7 Hansard (30 June) . . Page.. 1862 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

comments about that. First of all, that may well be very substantially true. It may well be that nobody in the government, until much later in this exercise, addressed their minds to the question of what particular head of the law was enabling these transactions to take place. They were making these decisions on the basis of a practice which had grown up under the previous Audit Act of the Territory. The Audit Act did allow these sorts of transactions. The new Financial Management Act imposed a different and slightly higher standard, requiring the making of a guideline, but that had not been executed through this oversight, and therefore nobody did look at that particular question.

Mr Speaker, what does that statement of Mr Stanhope's say about intention?. Where is the intention in all of this to break the law if nobody, as he puts it, until 30 April this year had adverted to the possibility that there was a problem with a breach in the law? Where is the intention that he suggests must have been present to break the law and that Mr Quinlan says directly was there to break the law of the Territory? Of course, his own words suggest that there was no such intention. Mr Speaker, what does that say about a refusal to obey the law? Of course, it suggests that there was no such refusal.

Mr Quinlan made some remarks in this debate after Mr Stanhope. Whereas Mr Stanhope's comments about Mrs Carnell were not especially personal, I cannot say the same about Mr Quinlan's remarks. He says that the Chief Minister's mistakes could not have been mistakes; that they must have been deliberate. Why were they deliberate? He says that Mrs Carnell is involved with every decision that gets made in this city and therefore she must have known that down in the bowels of her department a public servant was breaking the law. Mr Speaker, it sounds to me a bit like saying that if a member of a Minister's staff goes to someone's house therefore the Minister must have known it was happening and must have authorised everything that particular person happened to say at that time. It sounds very much like that, if you ask me, Mr Speaker.

I am not particularly concerned about those comments. I am concerned about another comment, though. I hope that Mr Rugendyke in particular shares my concern about these particular remarks. I want to quote what Mr Quinlan had to say in the course of the debate today:

The reference to brown paper bags is unmistakable in this debate. I cannot take a point of order on Mr Quinlan's remarks, because the Chief Minister is subject to a motion which is impugning her. However, I appeal to Mr Quinlan not to let that remark stay on the record. If he has no substantiated claims of brown paper bags, as he puts it, he should remove any reference to that and any inference that flows from that. (Further extension of time granted)

Mr Speaker, the reference to the Chief Minister having a lot to gain by squeaking past this latest disaster is unmistakable. I just make the point to members in this place that at the height of the VITAB debate, with money going off to offshore betting agencies and people with criminal records coming onto the scene and so on, it would have been extremely easy to have made claims about Mr Berry that he had been taking brown paper parcels as well. Nobody did, to the credit of those on this side of the chamber, and I ask

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