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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 8 Hansard (25 August) . . Page.. 2349 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

corruption. There was a real stench to do with corruption in the State of New South Wales. Everybody who had any involvement or any contact with public administration knew that there was corruption in New South Wales.

Similarly, in Queensland, the Queensland Criminal Justice Commission was established against a backdrop of prosecutions and convictions of members of the Government and senior police, the Fitzgerald inquiry and so on. Those things were evident. Everybody knew that things were rotten in the State of Queensland. There were more than enough examples for politicians and the like to be citing when the opportunity arose.

It disturbs me that someone has chosen to put the ACT in the category of New South Wales, a la 1985, and Queensland about the same period, a la the Joh era, when in debates in this house in the last year, or two years or three years, there simply have not been allegations of that kind made in the context of debates on this subject or in any other context. There have been plenty of opportunities where we might make those sorts of allegations; such as at the height of the VITAB inquiry, for example. It would have been extremely easy for members of the then Opposition to allege that some people had their hands in the till. Not only was there a problem with the waste of public money over a failed offshore betting agency, but also someone was on the take. There must have been some money flowing back to some officials or politicians out of all of that.

Mr Berry: There was no waste of money then, Gary. That happened later.

MR HUMPHRIES: And that allegation was never made, as Mr Berry would well know. He knows that was never made. No-one made those allegations because there was no substance to them. No-one doubts that those involved at the level of government acted with complete propriety about the matter, if perhaps with some foolishness. The same thing could be said about any of the other debates we have had about things that have gone wrong in the last few years. Bruce Stadium has been a matter of considerable concern to the Assembly. No-one has seriously suggested, I believe, that anybody in the Government or the bureaucracy has been taking money or acting corruptly in respect of Bruce Stadium. Again, perhaps people would say they acted foolishly.

Mr Quinlan: Arrogantly perhaps.

MR HUMPHRIES: Even arrogantly, I hear. I have some option for descriptions of that kind, but no-one has said that there is corruption there. But we have now an accusation from Mr Kaine that we have corruption in the ACT; that there is a creeping cancer; that there are disturbing revelations. What are the revelations? What has been revealed?

There was a time when we had allegations of corruption in this Assembly. That, unfortunately, goes right back to the very first Assembly at the time when Mr Collaery was in this place and made a very large number of allegations of corruption. At that time members of this place, particularly members of the Labor Party who were in the firing line of those claims, were quick to pour scorn on those suggestions, and the government of the day, the Labor Government, was joined by the Liberal Opposition. I want particularly to quote the then Leader of the Opposition, Trevor Kaine, MLA, in reference to a particular suggestion that there was corruption which needed to be investigated by some kind of high level inquiry. He said this:

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