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

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 5 Hansard (10 May) . . Page.. 1411 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

We also undertook to pay all the expenses associated with this deal. What have we heard about the expenses? What do we know about the expenses? We know from the Chief Minister's answers in this place that the expenses for this venture, this rock concert, were $545,000. We know from Mr McManus from ITC that he met out of his pocket about $250,000. Let us take $250,000 from $540,000. What are we left with? About $300,000. The ACT's exposure, on those sums, is $300,000. Should we have insurance to cover that potential loss, that expense, particularly when the contract says that we will not only share any profits but also share the losses.

What if this had been a disaster? What if it had cost us millions of dollars? Would you not like to know that we had insurance covering that liability, covering that exposure? The ACT became joint rock concert promoters with an international entrepreneur. We entered into a contract which required that entrepreneur to take out insurance to cover our exposure and, in the event, to cover any loss of profits resulting from a cancellation of the concert for whatever reason. That is what we are talking about here. The ACT became a joint venture partner with a rock concert promoter for a deal that it seems, on the rough figures available to us, we have already committed $300,000 or thereabouts to.

Mr Humphries: You know how much has been committed, because it is all in the tabled documents.

MR STANHOPE: We do not. The Chief Minister has told us $540,000. You should listen. You should understand what we are dealing with here. The Chief Minister has told us that the expenses to date are $545,000. We also understand that the takings from ticket sales were well over $700,000. In addition to roughly $300,000 that it seems we may have expended, we have coming to us about $100,000 in loss of profit. Under the insurance arrangements that were entered into, or that should have been entered into, we have coming to us about $400,000. That is what we are insured for: the profit that we might have made. That is what ITC contracted to protect us from and for.

We now hear from the Chief Minister that they did not do it. There is no contract of insurance in joint names. We do not have an insurance policy covering our losses, our expenses, our risks. It does not exist. All we have, apparently, is an indemnity arrangement, some underwriting arrangements facilitated by Lloyd's of London. We think that is what we have-nobody knows.

We have had the argument that it is a generic thing; that it covers every concert. I do not care about the other concerts. I care about the ACT ratepayers' money. I want to know what they did to protect the ACT ratepayers' money. It seems they did nothing. If ITC does not cough up with $400,000, is the ACT government going to sue? You should not be suing ITC; you should be making a legitimate claim on a reputable insurance company, if you had administered this contract seriously, if you had taken the interests of the ACT ratepayer seriously-and it seems you have not done so.

One wonders about the other aspects of the administration of this contract. One of the clauses says that BOPL will meet the expenses. If BOPL was to meet the expenses, why did McManus pay $250,000 worth of them? On what basis did he pay up? Were those bills paid by McManus cleared by BOPL? Whom did he make the payments to? Do we know what they were for? Were they legitimate claims? Were they itemised? Does he have receipts? Did BOPL clear them?

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