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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 4 Hansard (28 March) . . Page.. 1055 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

Mr Smyth then wrote a letter on 14 March. Mind you, there is no apology at all in this letter for misleading by saying that the documents were going to be produced. The minister referred to the motion passed by the Assembly on 28 February. Ms Tucker has referred to the second paragraph of the letter and some other commentary. In the last paragraph of the letter, the minister stated:

That is not what we asked for. We asked for the papers. We did not ask for a briefing. We do not want any briefing from the CEO-we want to see the papers. You said we could see the papers. You said it twice. Not once have you apologised or come back into the place and say, "I misled you." You have had plenty of opportunities. Not once did you apologise to members by way of a letter to them saying, "I am sorry, I have misled you, I cannot now do that and I will explain later or offer some explanation." We have had two days of Assembly sittings, and not once have you apologised for misleading this Assembly.

Mr Deputy Speaker, the tradition in this Assembly if one is caught out and wants to repair the situation, is to apologise at the first opportunity. Certainly you could draw the conclusion that it was never the intention of the government, certainly never the intention of CTEC, to disclose the documents to this place.

The government was either part of this deal or was too weak to override the position which had been put to them by CTEC. Either way, this minister has misled this place and should be censured. In fact, there are plenty of instances on the record where ministers, and I am one of them, have been belted for alleged misleading and have lost their jobs-and one has recently left. Mr Deputy Speaker, this minister deserves to be censured by any measure. This has been a deliberately misleading performance by this minister from the beginning-there is no way of avoiding this conclusion.

When you have a look at the papers that were provided with the information excluded from them, you can easily draw the conclusion that the government is trying to cover things up. From my reading of the papers, there were 22 or 23 submissions-it is hard to be sure because there is some confusion about that issue.

I am especially interested in the special consideration that was given to Brindabella Park in those documents. There is no list of the short-listed people but there is mention of the special consideration given to Brindabella Park and how it was reviewed at one stage and later, in some way, somehow, included on the short list. We will never know how because the information has been blacked out.

For my part, the documents are useless because they do not have in them what this Assembly demanded. So this minister should be censured for refusing to supply the documents which this Assembly directed him to supply. But, most of all, he should be censured for misleading us. He twice said that we would get the information and we did not. He has not taken the opportunity to apologise on any occasion in the intervening

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