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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 05 Hansard (Friday, 14 May 2004) . . Page.. 2035 ..

I have another question. Given the way that this whole Phillip oval matter has been handled, if the minister had been up front about all the negotiations and even if he’d sent us this information and said, “Look, it’s not for publication but, because you need to deliberate on this issue, we will give you all the information,” then—not dribs and drabs until today—maybe the outcome would have been different. Who knows? Maybe the recommendation would have been a little bit different. I don’t know.

But at the end of the day, we were tasked to come up with a report and recommendations based on the information we had presented to us during the estimates hearings, and that is what we did. And if you don’t like it, that’s your bad luck.

We know that we’re going to fail because you’ve got the numbers. At the end of the day, the majority of the members of this committee are confident that that recommendation is the right recommendation, based on the information that we were provided.

We asked the minister during that process what he was planning to do once he purchased this, and he said, “Well, look, I’m not really sure; haven’t quite worked it out.” Then, on the other hand, he said, “Look, we can’t really disclose that. I don’t think it would be appropriate for me to disclose that development potential, given that the government may or may not seek to develop those sites ourselves.” I’d like to know from the minister: are you planning to break that block up and develop some of it and do something with the rest? The way this whole thing is being handled has been very suspect. I am very, very concerned at the way this has been handled.

MR SPEAKER: Order! There are too many conversations going on. Mrs Cross has the floor.

MRS CROSS: Thank you, Mr Speaker. This government went to the last election saying that they were going to be open, transparent and accountable. They were given a sort of a minority government mandate to govern on that basis. I have seen too many examples of that promise not being kept in this place. Some of us actually were looking forward to that open, accountable and transparent approach. Some of us thought it would be a nice alternative.

This is an example of one situation where I feel that perhaps this wasn’t handled in the most up-front, transparent way. This is what caused the majority of members on the Estimates Committee to come to the recommendation of approving the appropriation but not the $800,000 for the purchase of Phillip oval.

I’m still suspicious on what the minister plans to do with it. I’m still suspicious as to why we were told about a party during questioning and not parties, which is why, of course, when we wrote to him and asked him for correspondence about a party, we got a party; we didn’t get the parties until we discovered that there was another link. But he didn’t tell us; the other party told us and gave us that correspondence. So if that’s not withholding information and inadvertently—deliberately or not—misleading the committee, I don’t know.

The other concern that this committee had with this appropriation centred around the WorkCover situation and the Wizard account and the fact that a vendor, a client in this

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