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

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 5 Hansard (11 May) . . Page.. 1513 ..

MR OSBORNE (continuing):

As I said, there are no guarantees to anyone other than that, as we did with Bruce Stadium, we will act professionally. We need to look at the documents and decide whether or not there is anything in them that could be damaging to the company in question.

MR HUMPHRIES (Treasurer, Attorney-General and Minister for Justice and Community Safety) (5.04): Mr Speaker, given what was said yesterday by the government, I am obviously very pleased that there is a suggestion here that the insurance policy referred to in paragraph (iii) of the motion passed yesterday should not be placed in the public arena at this stage. I hope that production of the information in the way suggested will deal with the problem. I am pleased that members propose to take this course of action.

MR STANHOPE (Leader of the Opposition) (5.05): Mr Speaker, as outlined by Mr Osborne, I was approached today by the Chief Minister with a quite passionate plea for the so-called insurance policy not to be made public today. The Chief Minister insists that it is generally commercial-in-confidence. I continue not to understand how a policy of insurance taken out in the joint names of BOPL and ITC with an insurance company, in the terms required under the contract between ITC and BOPL, can possibly contain commercial-in-confidence material.

The contract was quite explicit. There was to be a contract in joint names between ITC and BOPL and an insurance company. It was to provide $10 million public liability insurance coverage. It was to require coverage against expenses and loss of profit in the event that the concert was cancelled for whatever reason, and it was to provide for insurance against breach of intellectual property. How an insurance policy designed to cover those three simple propositions can possibly be commercial-in-confidence still eludes me.

Mr Humphries: It covers other people. That is why.

MR STANHOPE: That is all the policy was meant to be-a simple policy of insurance between those two parties and an insurance company. The government tells us that that is not what it does; that it does a range of other things. The government has also told us that BOPL is not a party to this agreement, and hence my confusion and my scepticism.

It appears that the document the government is prepared to table pursuant to the Assembly's resolution fits some other description. I will be intrigued to see it. But I and the Labor Party are reasonable, as always. The Chief Minster has made a personal and quite passionate plea to me, and I believe to Mr Osborne, that we look at this material. I will look at it with great interest. I indicated to Mr Osborne that the Labor Party will support this motion, but I reiterate and put on the record, as Mr Osborne has, that the committee will make a decision about the future treatment of the document.

I guess there is not much more I can say about that until I see the document but, as I said, I continue to be incredibly bemused and sceptical about how such a simple contract of insurance can possibly have been framed in such a way that its release discloses genuinely commercially sensitive information pertaining to this apparently broad range

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