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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 01 Hansard (Wednesday, 11 February 2004) . . Page.. 246 ..

cannot think of a more blatant conflict of interest on the part of Mr Watt, nor do I think that the Chief Minister is without blame in this affair.

In an interview on the afternoon of the announcement Mr Watt denied having any knowledge of it: he stood aside; he was apart; he had no idea what the Chief Minister was up to until the statement was released. People can believe that as they want, except that later in the interview he said, “We have got about three months to do this.” That was new information. Nobody knew that they only had three months. It is very curious that Mr Watt seemed to have information afterwards.

Indeed, one could construct an argument that the Hume jail site is simply a straw man designed for an ambitious staffer to knock down and become the hero of Jerrabomberra. Is that the standard of public policy we can expect from this government and from the Chief Minister, expending taxpayers’ funds to assist his staffer to become an MP? Mr Stanhope will probably bolt down here now and get up on his hind legs and concoct some unlikely story that Mr Watt had absolutely no part, even passively, in the jail decision. To paraphrase Mr Quinlan, he should not bother to insult our intelligence with such excuses.

The conflict of interest is real here, Mr Speaker, and it must be resolved by the Chief Minister immediately. As long as there are issues relating to Eden-Monaro, and it looks like the jail will be an issue for a while, both Mr Watt and Mr Stanhope have a serious conflict of interest, which brings us back to the assertions made by Mr Hargreaves. He claims that it is all being done as a favour for a mate, and he names the owner of the airport group, Mr Snow, who won an award for his service to—

MR SPEAKER: Mr Smyth, I thought I heard you say that Mr Stanhope had a conflict of interest.

MR SMYTH: I think he does, Mr Speaker.

MR SPEAKER: That is a matter that is in the hands of the Assembly; it is not something that you can impute.

MR SMYTH: If you wish me to withdraw that, I will withdraw it, Mr Speaker. We may take it up through other processes in the Assembly.

Mr Speaker, what is happening here? I need to refer to a statement by the Chief Minister some time ago in response to question No 396 about what was happening with the application by a Canberra firm for a block of land. It is a Canberra firm that has now waited more than two years under this government for a block of land. Almost 12 months ago, it was said was that an application was being considered by the government and a decision would be made shortly. Gee, what is the federal government doing?

An application has been made and it is being considered by the government and a decision will be made shortly—apparently, the same process. It is good enough for an ACT firm and a resident to wait two and a bit years to get a block of land from the Stanhope government because a decision cannot be made, but it is not good enough that Chief Minister Jon Stanhope has to wait a couple of months while the federal

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