Page 4030 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 13 December 2006
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She goes on to state:
There was no evidence of any actual or perceived conflict of interest, nor of any intention by LDA to mislead or restrict potential bidders.
The claim made by Mr Seselja, Dr Foskey and others that preferential treatment was provided to some parties over others has been found to be false. Finally, Mr Seselja is on record in this place as saying that the marketing process was flawed and failed to achieve a full return for the community. I again draw Mr Seselja’s attention to the comments of the Auditor-General. She dismissed the claims that the decision to market the site as a bulky goods precinct was flawed, saying:
LDA’s marketing strategy, which emphasised a bulky goods retailing opportunity, was consistent with market research prevailing at that time.
She went on to say:
Audit considers that it was unlikely that an alternative marketing strategy could have attracted significant interest from developers pursuing a traditional shopping centre-type development.
This third and significant claim by the opposition has also been shown to be false. Mr Seselja deserves censure today because for the past six months he has been conducting a campaign inside and outside this place, making claims that have been misleading and that have been shown to be completely untrue.
I now turn to the comments made by Mr Seselja in a media release dated 18 August 2006. We see in that media release that he continues to make claims even though it is becoming clear that those claims are untrue. In his media release entitled, “Minister afraid to open the Pandora’s Box of Epicentre”, Mr Seselja raised a series of questions, which I will address one by one. First he asked:
Did all the bidders get the same advice from ACTPLA and the LDA?
The answer to that question is, “Yes.” He goes on to state:
Why did the LDA and ACTPLA apparently treat two different bidders in two different ways?
Let me again read what the Auditor-General found in relation to that matter:
ACTPLA afforded no preferential treatment to Austexx, or to any other potential bidder. ACTPLA endeavoured to maintain an appropriate balance between ensuring consistent information was provided to all inquirers, and ensuring commercial-in-confidence information provided by one bidder was not advertently or inadvertently transmitted to commercial competitors. Audit notes that it is not always easy to achieve such a balance.
On that claim Mr Seselja has been shown to be wrong in his allegations and he has misled the Canberra community in making such allegations. When Mr Seselja
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