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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 10 Hansard (29 August) . . Page.. 3576 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

I have had this amendment drafted to ensure that the Assembly's amendment to the Territory Owned Corporations Act, passed in 1998, is tightened and adhered to by the government. The government claims its legal advice lets them off the hook when it comes to the Williamsdale quarry.

Mr Humphries: You are agreeing with that by moving this bill.

MR BERRY: Mr Humphries interjects, and I agree with him. I will come to that in a minute.

Of course the government claims that it is able to dispose of assets of the Williamsdale quarry. A close reading of their legal advice makes it clear that the issue has not been tested in the courts and that there is a great deal of ambiguity. My legal advice was unequivocal: it said that it was unlawful; the government broke the law. And we can remember the different legal opinions-on profit in relation to the possible illegality in relation to Bruce Stadium and the final advice and actions of the Auditor-General.

The first piece of legal advice that Mr Humphries relied upon was the legal advice from Mallesons. Mr Humphries issued a boastful press release "Williamsdale quarry: Berry proven wrong. Must apologise". The advise from Mallesons did not touch on section 16 of the act, which concerns the government's disposal of its assets at the Williamsdale quarry. The government at first said, "No, this is an acquisition. This is an interesting thing: we have acquired a joint venturer. We've given them half of something, we got $3.8 million back and we've acquired a joint venturer. We did not dispose of anything."

But half the rights and profits from the quarry, estimated to be $9 million or so over the first five years, were sold for $3.8 million. So they disposed of something. If something was missing out of my backyard and I had the money in my hand, I would reckon that I had disposed of something. It has been completely dissembling and disingenuous of the government to take the approach that it has to this matter.

Other legal advice they got was on whether this was a substantial asset or not. I can tell when something is substantial: it looks pretty big. If anybody has ever been out to the Williamsdale quarry, they will have seen that it is pretty substantial. There is millions of dollars worth of equipment out there, and the government have the right for 30 years to extract quarry material from the site and sell it. It is said to be worth over $50 million to the territory, and the government have sold half of the rights to that. The government laugh about it, but it is the same political party that lied to the electorate before the 1998 election. They said the sale of Actew was not on the agenda. What liars. Weeks later, they moved to sell it.

On the government's own legal advice, it would be able to sell what is left of Williamsdale quarry without reference to this place, notwithstanding what the Chief Minister has said here. This all started in September 1998, when Totalcare reached an agreement with the McDonald family to operate a quarry at Williamsdale. On 31 August 1999 there was an engineering business case for Williamsdale quarry. On 29 November there was a competitor analysis of the proposed Williamsdale quarry by Access Economics-none of which, by the way, has discovered any risk involved in this enterprise. On 24 January 2000, a Totalcare shareholder, Mr Humphries as Treasurer, the

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