Page 865 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 2 May 2007
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the submerged iceberg of incompetence, mismanagement and bad government and governance perpetrated by Mr Stefaniak and his colleagues in relation to Bruce.
What of the auditor’s other findings? There is a lot of focus on Auditor-General’s reports today. Let us go to other findings of the Auditor-General in relation to Mr Stefaniak and his colleagues. The Auditor-General said that the costs incurred in redeveloping the stadium did not represent value for money for the territory; that the decision to redevelop was made without the aid of relevant, accurate and complete information; and that the management of financing arrangements was ineffective.
In short, the Auditor-General found that governance—here we are: it is a motion about governance—and management arrangements for the redevelopment project were not effective. Here we are today expected to take advice on good governance from Bill Stefaniak and the ACT Liberals. How far should we suspend normal, natural credulity? A motion from Bill Stefaniak and the Liberal Party on good governance!
Let us go to other examples of things that the Liberals see as appropriate governance. Does anybody remember the Woodies tennis match? Have you reflected recently on that? On that occasion, a tennis match that had been bid for and won at a charity auction by the head of the hotel school suddenly was transformed into a sponsored ACT Forests and Environment event on the flimsy ground that the two tennis players with the name “Woodies” had some relationship to forests. Before you knew it, Ted Woodbridge and Mark Woodforde had names that contained a certain arrangement of letters invoking the idea of trees.
We probably should be grateful that the Liberal Party at the time—the political geniuses at the time, those cemented to good governance—did not come up with the idea of, say, Housing ACT sponsoring a comeback by Pat Rafter. We could go on and on. I certainly do not think that this government has much to learn about good governance from a party capable of concocting that arrant nonsense.
But, Mr Deputy Speaker, as you know, as a member of the Liberal Party, there is more. Do we need reminding of the V8 car races? Let us go back to the Auditor-General’s report into the V8 car races, an event that had significant negative economic results for the ACT. The cabinet submissions contained insignificant, inaccurate and incomplete information. Of course, Mr Stefaniak was involved in all these decisions. Here is this paragon moving motions today about good governance. He was involved in all of these decisions.
Let me go to Hall-Kinleyside—another one of Mr Stefaniak’s masterstrokes. The Hall-Kinleyside development involved an agreement that was rushed into and documents that were never released by the then government, under FOI or any other mechanism—so committed was it to open government and transparency.
Despite every FOI request of this government, never once did it release any information in relation to any of these issues. It never released any information in relation to the Bruce Stadium fiasco, under FOI or any other mechanism. This party—committed to good governance, openness and transparency!—refused every FOI request on Hall-Kinleyside and every FOI request on the Bruce Stadium. Humbug and hypocrisy.
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