Page 4048 - Week 13 - Thursday, 6 December 2007
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That requires members of the Labor Party to do certain things. That contract may be a written contract or it may be a verbal contract, but there are specific and explicit undertakings that people make to take on the franchise of being a Labor Party candidate and, consequently, a Labor Party member. At the same time the Labor Party receives funding from the Labor Club as a direct result of the operation of gaming machines. There is from time to time, and fairly regularly, a crossover of membership of the boards of the Labor Club and affiliated clubs and the hierarchy of the ACT ALP. It is no secret that the former Treasurer, Mr Quinlan, from time to time was on the board of the Labor Club. There is a close—
Mr Corbell: Not when he was Treasurer.
MRS DUNNE: I did not say when he was the Treasurer. There is, from time to time, an overlap. Mr Quinlan, a member of the Labor Party who became the Treasurer of the ACT, had from time to time been a member of the board of the Labor Club.
Mr Corbell: But not when he was Treasurer.
MRS DUNNE: I did not say and I do not imply that this happened when he was the Treasurer. But there is a clear case for the potential for a conflict. Mr Smyth’s motion today says let us take the ambiguities, the ambiguities that Mr Corbell himself raised and the ambiguities that Dr Foskey raised, and put the standing order under complete scrutiny in the admin and procedures committee.
What is the Labor Party afraid of, Mr Speaker? You chair the administration and procedures committee. There is a member of the Labor Party in addition to you on that committee. There is Mr Smyth representing the Liberal Party and Dr Foskey representing the crossbenches. It is not as though you can be outvoted on this. So what is the Labor Party afraid of? The Labor Party are afraid of opening these matters up to scrutiny in the same way that they have been afraid of opening up the school closure issue to scrutiny, the same way that every time that people want to check or question what the Labor Party does, they have some attempt to close it down. It is the same way that Flynn residents are being closed down in court procedures.
MR SPEAKER: Come back to the subject matter of the debate.
MRS DUNNE: This is a matter of the Labor Party wanting to close down debate on a matter which is of public interest. People are concerned. People raise it with me on a regular basis. We have got a Labor Club slap-bang in the middle of town promoting poker machine use, and this is a matter of concern to people in the community. It is a concern to restaurateurs and hoteliers who are undercut by the Labor Party poker machines and their concessions. This is a problem.
You, Mr Speaker, and all the people on the government benches obtain a benefit as a result of the operation of that club and the other clubs around the town. Well and good, you might say; we were entrepreneurial enough to do this back in the day. Some people would say that that is fair enough. We have a situation where there is a clear problem—
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