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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 5 Hansard (25 August) . . Page.. 1222 ..

MR QUINLAN (continuing):

Without the actual existence of three distinct leases - setting aside claimed confusion as to descriptions of tracts of land as to whether they were "leases" or "blocks" - answers to the questions delivered in this house must be untrue, untrue deliberately or untrue through reckless mishandling of them. With all the focus and intense questioning that went on for a long period, particularly by Mr Corbell, it beggars belief that the distinction between "block" and "lease" at important times, and the trouble that the Chief Minister and the Deputy Chief Minister seemed to have in using them in the correct context, was not picked up by the army of senior executives, public servants, personal staff and advisers supporting Ministers every question time.

We all see regularly the superstructure that supports a Chief Minister and the rest of the Executive. We are all conscious of the high calibre of those individuals, like Mr Mick Lilley, who hover during question time and the more important debates. One of the fascinations in sitting in this place during question time is to watch the ritualistic process of audience participation, the padding out of questions while the spins are contrived and the notes are delivered. During the more boring answers I sometimes attempt to estimate the hourly cost to the taxpayer of this level of support and suggest that one day we might implement a salary cap in the place.

I cannot and will never accept that at no stage did anyone in this structure inform the Chief Minister or her deputy of the mistakes they were continually making on a daily basis for weeks and weeks in this chamber and in public statements. To my mind, it is simply not possible. We are also being asked to believe that the Chief Minister and the Deputy Chief Minister not only suffered a little confusion using the terms "lease" and "block", but also they did it the same way - an outstandingly extraordinary coincidence. They did it more than once in the same way. For their public statements to hold up, you have to believe that two seasoned politicians, one a former Planning Minister and the other the current Planning Minister in everything but name, made the same error on several occasions. That is simply not believable. But there is more.

The Under Treasurer, who seems to moonlight development deals for the Government, suffered the same confusion in the same way before the Select Committee on Estimates. Do you sense a pattern of deception? Of course you do. Further, we were later served the ultimate insult to our intelligence. The Chief Minister informed us that, even though the developer was withdrawing from the project, the Government would accept all the expenses because every item of the material received was reusable. What utter rot. It means that most of the lawyers in this world would be out of business because all contracts are reusable. What sheer arrogance. My understanding of the Westminster system of government includes the principle that misleading the parliament is the most serious of offences.

On Capital Hill, in the current term, we have seen a procession of cheats and liars exposed. Most of those cheats and liars acted not for personal gain but out of sheer arrogance - something we may have witnessed in this place. Most of them, usually after some resistance, have been put to the sword, and so it should be. This Assembly must show that it will not countenance deliberate or reckless misleading answers given to legitimate questions regarding the processes of government. This Assembly had inauspicious beginnings, with the troop of idiots that stood for election along with

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