Page 2117 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 22 June 2010

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Privileges 2010—Select Committee

Report

MS BRESNAN (Brindabella) (11.39): Pursuant to the order of the Assembly of 23 February 2010, as amended on 6 May 2010, I present the following report:

Privileges 2010—Select Committee—Report—Evidence of Mr Mark Sullivan to the Select Committee on Estimates 2009-10, dated 3 May 2010, including dissenting and additional comments (Mr Coe), together with the transmittal letter and a copy of the relevant minutes of proceedings.

I move:

That the report be noted.

I will speak briefly to the report. First off, I would like to thank the committee’s secretary, Derek Abbott. Again I think, along with all the secretaries, he did an excellent job on this, through possibly what was not an easy process, and I do thank him for the assistance he provided to me. I would also like to acknowledge my fellow committee members, Mr Barr and Mr Coe.

I would like to go to what the committee was charged with looking at and read out the terms of reference. Pursuant to standing order 276, the committee was:

… to examine whether a breach of privilege or contempt of the Assembly has been committed by Mr Mark Sullivan, Managing Director of ACTEW Corporation, in relation to evidence given on matters relating to the Murrumbidgee-to-Googong bulk water transfer pipeline:

(a) at the Select Committee on Estimates 2009-2010 on 18 May 2009; or

(b) at the 2 December 2009 or the 18 February 2010 hearings of the Assembly’s Standing Committee on Public Accounts in its inquiry into Annual Reports 2008-2009; or

This is all noted in the report, obviously, but it is important to note that this report did not consider the substantive issues relating to the Murrumbidgee to Googong pipeline. The committee was concerned with the statements made by Mr Sullivan at the estimates hearing and the comments on the matter at the other committee hearings that were mentioned in the terms of reference.

I guess it is important to also point out what was at issue with this particular hearing. No doubt, Mr Sullivan’s answers to Mr Smyth and Mrs Dunne were at the core of the matters being considered by the committee and at issue was whether—and I will read this out from the report:

• The answer to Mr Smyth, stating that a ‘draft TOC’ for the pipeline had been established but it was not yet an ‘agreed TOC’ was an accurate reflection of the situation as put to the ACTEW Corporation Board at its meeting of 13 May 2009 and of the decisions of the Board; and

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