Page 2618 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 24 August 1994
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The ripples from VITAB have washed well over the boundaries of the ACT. This affair has confirmed what commentators have been saying over the last three years, and that is that the ACT is run by a group of amateurs. The image of the Government of the ACT in the eyes of Australians is in tatters. The incompetence and mismanagement in this entire affair of Mr Berry, who is not here, of Mr Lamont, who is not here, and of Ms Follett, who also is not here, which is interesting in itself, have made us the laughing-stock of Australia. They approved the signing of a deal that has already cost us, and will continue to cost us, a bomb.
Do not take my word for it, though; just listen to what other people are saying. The best way for this Assembly to reflect impartially upon the extent of damage caused to the ACT by the VITAB affair is to take an outsider's view. The influential newsletter Inside Canberra is distributed to Australia's top company executives and decision makers. Its subscribers range from Prime Ministers to chief executives, many of whom one day will have to consider whether or not to invest in the ACT. What message has the Follett Labor Government sent to potential investors outside this Territory? Only last week the Chief Minister told businesses in the ACT that they had to create an extra 1,000 jobs a year - they, not she, of course. Employment growth comes from expansion, and expansion from investment. How would any chief executive react when he or she was making an investment decision after reading this extract from Inside Canberra? I want to quote what is perhaps the most telling summary of the worst financial and political disaster to befall the ACT in its short history of self-government. I am going to quote quite extensively from this newsletter that goes to a very large number of influential people. It says:
On one or two occasions when he was Prime Minister and facing the Keating challenge, Bob Hawke declared he was not staying on for the money, but because it was his duty to Australia. To much sniggering by smart arse journalists, he said on more than one occasion he could earn a lot more money outside Parliament than in it. Well he showed them, didn't he? As an 11 per cent shareholder in VITAB -
mind you, he still cannot work out where his 11 per cent comes from -
he made apparently only one trip to Canberra to introduce the Vanuatu-based betting outfit to the last Stalinist Government in the western world, -
remember that I am quoting here -
the Follett Labor Government, which mismanages the ACT.
One bureaucrat involved in the affair told the inquiry conducted by Professor Pearce earlier this year that because Mr Hawke was involved, it was not thought necessary to check the antecedents of the people behind VITAB. Not that we are suggesting there is anything wrong with their antecedents, but it shows how useful it is to have Bob along to open doors.
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