Page 2201 - Week 07 - Thursday, 27 August 2020
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Finding 6 was:
The Committee finds that Colliers International had a considerable degree of access to the LDA.
Finding 7 was:
The Committee finds the LDA did not meet its public interest and probity imperatives equally, resulting in poor practice.
Unfortunately, when we get to finding 8, this was not a consensus finding, in the same way as when we got to recommendation 6 it was not a consensus recommendation. Yet, throughout the deliberations on the report, we had many, many amendments proposed and accepted in the interests of achieving a consensus report. Yet, once again, at the last minute, some members of the committee reverted to party lines in dissenting from the finding and the recommendation. Not all members of the committee, in the end, at the last minute, agreed to finding 6, which was:
Some members of the Committee find that the Chief Minister and Treasurer, Mr Andrew Barr MLA, then the Minister for Economic Development and minister responsible for the Land Development Agency, was on two occasions involved in the approval of the acquisition of rural leases during this period but there is no evidence before the Committee to suggest that he considered whether the Land Development Agency’s acquisition of rural leases to the west of Canberra was consistent with existing ACT Government policy or in alignment with the Land Acquisition Policy Framework.
We made considerable changes to that finding, expecting a consensus. Yet, at the last minute, no, there was no consensus.
It is the same with recommendation 6, which was about referral to the Integrity Commission. Throughout our discussions and the hearings and when we had our meetings and talked with each other, we talked about things that appeared quite clearly to be dodgy, irregular, unusual, unauthorised, over and over. Was it corruption? As Mrs Dunne has already said, this committee did not have the power to determine if there was corruption; but, to continue the analogy of Mrs Dunne, if it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it is probably a duck, and that is why Mrs Dunne and I will be writing to the Integrity Commission to refer this report to them.
Having been on the public accounts committee for a number of years—it is one of my favourite committees that I have been on; I have been on a number of others; in fact, at one point I was the Chair of PAC—I am once again disappointed, deeply, deeply disappointed, although not surprised, that the Labor members of this committee resiled from these last two, one finding and one recommendation, and went with their party lines rather than a bipartisan approach to the issue at hand. I am deeply disappointed, because so much of the work of committees is done in such a collaborative and collegiate way, that at the last minute, after accepting so many changes to try to make the report palatable to everyone, it did not happen. I think it is such a shame.
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