Page 3852 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 19 October 2005

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I do not even know at this point exactly how the New South Wales ombudsman has arrived at the figures. I would be reasonably certain that it is not on the basis of 100 per cent sampling but I would like to check just how thorough the sampling was—whether it stands up to a statistical chi-square test or whatever other test you want to apply to say, “Yes, that is a valid conclusion.” I would be pretty confident that the New South Wales ombudsman would have abided by statistical principles like that, and it may be the case it is 35 per cent. I do not know how far out they are at this point and we will certainly take a look at that. But I think really this is not the most responsible way to do something like that.

I do not know whether you feel the need at this particular stage of your career for a little notoriety—

Mr Mulcahy: I wrote to you months ago.

MR QUINLAN: You wrote and said somebody is concerned about land value.

Mr Mulcahy: I wrote a number of letters but you were away overseas again, as always.

MR QUINLAN: I have got the correspondence here—

Mr Mulcahy: That’s wonderful.

MR QUINLAN: I have got all the correspondence that we could dig out and I think the best I can gauge here is that there are two serious letters that relate to an individual valuation.

Mr Corbell: It’s a veritable flood.

MR QUINLAN: Yes. I am very happy to look further. Give me a list of the letters you have written and then I will verify. But if it is inconsistent with your claims of writing to me on a regular basis and getting non-committal answers, we will come back and debate that.

MR MULCAHY: Mr Speaker, I ask a supplementary question.

Mr Hargreaves: Hundreds of people ringing your office every day.

Mr Stanhope: An avalanche of letters. We might just check the avalanche.

MR MULCAHY: The word “avalanche” is yours, by the way. Does the ACT valuation system comply with international standards for checking the accuracy of valuations against sales?

MR QUINLAN: I will take that one on notice because—

Mr Mulcahy: Oh, yeah.


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