Page 2624 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 24 August 1994
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what her colleagues have said and done. How can anybody forget the wild accusations and the innuendo that went on week after week in this place about supposed criminal involvement with VITAB? Do you remember the so-called evidence that they proudly produced to back up these smears? The Liberals were left shamefaced when their evidence, so called, was revealed to be a doctored version of leaked police criminal records. That so-called evidence was provided to them by the Victorian Liberal Minister for Racing to suggest a connection between Mr Berry and criminal activity. Of course, as we now know, the awful irony of that was that it was the Victorian Liberal Government which was forced to cancel its contract between VicTAB and a Vanuatu company, the Chung Corporation, when real criminal involvement became apparent.
Mr Deputy Speaker, these facts were barely reported by the local media - it seemed a little bit hard for them - but they were adequately reported by the national media, and the facts are very clear. Mrs Carnell was very hasty and very careless in accepting her colleagues' urgings and assurances about those forged documents. Nor has Mrs Carnell's credibility been helped more recently by the stupid prediction that the Government would be liable for a $50m pay-out to VITAB. Mrs Carnell, Mr Deputy Speaker, later modified her claim to $10m, which was equally stupid, equally mischievous and equally irresponsible.
The second fact, and it is a very sad one too, is that the Liberals have shown that they will stop at nothing to create what they think is a political story to suit them. They were so ruthlessly determined to see the relationship between ACTTAB, VITAB and VicTAB turn into a disaster that they actually set out to sabotage the interests of ACTTAB and the ACT community. Throughout this whole sorry affair the Liberals have sought to interfere in the relationship between ACTTAB and its Victorian and New South Wales counterparts. They have made numerous approaches to Victorian and New South Wales Liberal Ministers in an effort to induce them to interfere politically in the commercial relationship between TABs. Mr Lamont detailed one such interference in question time yesterday. The leaked and doctored police records, which I referred to earlier, were the result of another such escapade.
The Liberals, Mr Deputy Speaker, quite deliberately have decided that ACTTAB and the interests of our community are expendable in the interests of political scalps. Mrs Carnell should think very carefully about these issues. It does her no credit to associate with the hardliners in her party who feel no responsibility whatsoever to the wider community. Everybody expects politicians to put their point of view.
Mr De Domenico: What a joke! Why don't you just own up that it was a monumental stuff-up by your ex-Minister and say, "Sorry, people of the ACT"?
MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!
MS FOLLETT: Mr Deputy Speaker, on a point of order: I would ask whether the term "stuff-up" is parliamentary.
MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, I do not believe that it is. I ask that it be withdrawn, Mr De Domenico.
Mr De Domenico: I withdraw.
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