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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 3 Hansard (9 March) . . Page.. 898 ..

MR QUINLAN: By the records that are available. Most processes of the law and of audits involve looking back, examining and asking, "Was that right?".

Mr Moore: But this is a new joint venture.

Mr Humphries: But they are examining documents.

MR QUINLAN: But is it starting out on a legitimate base? If we have to have it, let us give it a legitimate start.

Mr Stanhope: Go from expressions of interest to single select.

MR QUINLAN: We will not debate it any more. Let us leave that to an independent probity auditor to decide. He does not have to sit in on negotiations, but to optimise the outcome for the Australian Capital Territory we need to make sure that he looks at it and says, "I think the right valuation bases are being used". That is another subject of debate here. So we get an auditor to look at it to ensure effective contract risk management arrangements. That sounds logical to me and it is a straight lift from South Australia.

If this house does anything responsible tonight, it has to make sure that where we started is the right place. If it is not the right place, we have the opportunity to fix it. I do not have to remind honourable members that we have got ourselves in a few fixes recently, with our bursts of enthusiasm and then worrying about the detail later. Let us worry about this sort of detail now. I commend the motion to the house as originally written and not totally emasculated by the Humphries' amendments.

MS TUCKER (10.46): I will be supporting this motion. I have listened to the arguments of Mr Humphries and the response from Mr Quinlan. I am particularly interested in the objections raised by Mr Humphries that looking back would be difficult. I was having the same thoughts that Mr Quinlan articulated; that that is the way we often make assessments about whether or not something was properly done. If Mr Humphries was saying that there is nothing particularly to look at, then I am even more worried than I was.

I assume that we would have a record of the arrangements, that there are records of meetings, that there are minutes and that people can understand the rationale for getting to the point that we are at now. I guess that is what many of us are interested in, and we feel that we have not had a really clear picture of that. I do not know why Mr Humphries would be afraid of that. If he is saying that it was all very informal and it is not something that someone could look at, and they would have had to have gone back in time to sit in the room, then it sounds like a very sloppy process.

Question put:

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