Page 4031 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 13 December 2006

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responds to this debate he should say why he made such claims when he had no evidence to suggest that that was the case. That is where he has failed as a member of this place. He has misled the Canberra community, he has made untrue claims, and he has failed to back them up with evidence. If there were any evidence it would have been found by the Auditor-General in her report and it has not been. Mr Seselja went on to say:

Has the ACT missed out on tens of millions of dollars?

He said that again and again.

Mr Mulcahy: You need to table that, Simon.

MR SPEAKER: Order!

MR CORBELL: The implication is clear: the ACT missed out on millions and millions of dollars. Mr Seselja’s strategy inside and outside this place was to imply that we had missed out on tens of millions of dollars. I state that that is clearly a falsehood. What does the Auditor-General say in relation to this matter? The Auditor-General confirms my statement by saying:

The auction price of $39 million attained was well above that of an independent backcast valuation commissioned by this Audit which took into account various scenarios of mixed uses, including direct factory outlet (DFO) use. Further, as it was not the Government’s policy intention to allow a major town shopping centre on the site, it is unlikely that the said land would have achieved a value of as much as $60 million, as suggested by some interested parties.

Those are not my words, the words of ACTPLA, or of the LDA; those are the words of the Auditor-General. That is the Auditor-General’s conclusion on the false and continual claims made by Mr Seselja inside and outside this place. Let us look at some other allegations made by Liberal Party members in this place. In a media statement on 29 July 2006 Mr Stefaniak said:

All Canberrans have a vested interest in knowing why one developer was apparently given more information than everyone else and why, as a result, lack of competition appears to have resulted in the Epicentre site being sold for around $60 million less than it should have been if it had been advertised up front to all as a general retail site.

Mr Stefaniak confirms the strategy of his shadow minister. It is about emphasising that the level of return was inadequate and that a failure of process led to that occurring. What does the Auditor-General say? She said:

Mr Seselja made another claim. On Monday, 29 May 2006, in a media release entitled “Epicentre like another town centre—Seselja”, he said:

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