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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 5 Hansard (10 May) . . Page.. 1350 ..
MS CARNELL (continuing):
Maybe it is worth running through a couple of the issues that Mr Stanhope raised, even though they are not actually in his motion. The joint venture was with Bruce Stadium Pty Ltd, not the newly created Stadiums Authority. Accordingly, the appropriate entity to deal with in this matter is BOPL. It is anticipated that BOPL, for legal purposes, will become a shell on 30 June 2000 and Bruce Property Trust, that is BPT, will be wound up on that date as well. Assets and liabilities from these entities will be transferred to the new authority on that date.
Bruce Operations Pty Ltd will continue to be the operational company involved until 30 June 2000. Again, the information that Mr Stanhope was given was to go to BOPL for information. That is why he did it, I assume. The Stadiums Authority Act was introduced into the Assembly on 9 December last year, and subsequently passed on 29 February this year. The initial gazettal of the authority was on 17 March this year and the gazettal of the notice of commencement of the authority was on 13 April this year.
While the authority now exists, there are, however, a number of things that still need to be done before it is operational. For simplicity, it was decided that the authority would take over operation and management of this stadium from 1 July 2000. This will ensure that all accounting, financial and legal issues can be addressed in a financial year sense. Accordingly, the Stadiums Authority is not yet operational and BOPL remains the responsible entity.
Again, Mr Stanhope was told and he has up until now dealt with BOPL on this issue. It is simply nonsense, and I have to say a political stunt, to make an issue, certainly when one does not exist, of who is responsible and who is not. Mr Stanhope knows perfectly well who is responsible and has been dealing with them.
Mr Speaker, I suppose the Assembly has to address the issue of when information should be made available and when it is in the public interest to do so. For example, we are currently building the hospice down near the Boat House. Should we be requiring the relationship between the contractor we are dealing with and paying and his or her bank to be released in this place simply because that could be regarded as being in the public interest? Obviously we would want to ensure that the contractor has liquidity, that the contractor has enough money and so on.
Mr Stanhope: They are pre-certified or they should not be employed, so we know that.
MR SPEAKER: Order!
MS CARNELL: Mr Speaker, equally we could easily say, in this place, that those-
Mr Stanhope: Pre-certification applies.
MR SPEAKER: Order! Would you be quiet, Mr Stanhope.
MS CARNELL
: If we start going down that path, asking for contracts between people we deal with and third parties to be made available, I would have to say we are treading in a very, very dangerous area. To start with, I do not know how we would do it. I do not
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