Page 3447 - Week 09 - Thursday, 21 August 2008
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I have not had the opportunity to review the findings of the Committee in detail. To suggest, however, that the voting shareholders were under an obligation to give a direction in relation to the ACT Fleet Management Contract held by Rhodium is wrong. To infer that the voting shareholders should have undertaken a more active role in influencing the management decisions of TOCs misapprehends the proper relationship, for were they to do so, the voting shareholders would have been in breach—
I repeat: “the voting shareholders would have been in breach”—
of the well-accepted separation between shareholders and directors in undertaking responsibility for the management of a company …
The ACT Government Solicitor has today, in the most unequivocal way—unequivocally, flatly—described this report, in its findings in relation to the role of shareholders as misconstruing the legal principles, as wrong. Had the shareholders—this is the remarkable thing—acted as the public accounts committee had directed, we would have been potentially subject to legal action. (Time expired.)
MR SPEAKER: Is there a supplementary question?
MR SESELJA: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Chief Minister, how can the Canberra community trust you to protect any public asset when you have abrogated your responsibility over the protection of this one?
MR STANHOPE: Thank you for the supplementary question. I can actually expand on the theme that I was just warming to.
Mr Seselja: Maybe you should answer the supplementary.
MR STANHOPE: In answering this supplementary about how we can be trusted, I note that we have here, in this instance, the fingerprints of the Deputy Leader of the Opposition all over a report—Brendan Smyth QC! I find this remarkable. I was, for a significant time, secretary of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs. I have a significant background in the operations of committees and committee reports. I have a significant background in the law. I have never, in my time of involvement with committee offices, parliamentary committee reports and parliamentary procedures, seen an instance where the members of a parliamentary committee, without legal qualifications, have taken it upon themselves to develop an interpretation of a provision of a piece of legislation or to proffer legal opinions on certain actions or non-actions. I know of no other example of a committee that would deign to give a legal opinion without reference or recourse to legal advice, a lawyer or any understanding of first principles.
We see the consequences of a committee that does that. We see it here today in a committee report tabled this morning, only four hours ago, and already rejected by the leading, most senior lawyer in the ACT government service as simply wrong—and suggesting not just that the report is wrong but that the course of action suggested by the committee as a course of action which the shareholders should have pursued would potentially lead the shareholders to be in breach of fundamental legal provisions in relation to Corporations Law.
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