Page 2430 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 17 June 2009

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MR SMYTH: We go through from 2002, and there is nothing from 2002, despite there being so much work done on the governance model. The governance model is a model; surely that is available to the members of this place. Surely the governance model does not contain your negotiation strategy with a third party? If there has been so much work done, one would assume that that work was done before—when did you first mention this?—August 2008, between May 2002 and let us call it July 2008. But none—

Ms Gallagher: There has been.

MR SMYTH: Well, where is it? Why isn’t it detailed here?

Ms Gallagher: It is.

MR SMYTH: It is not detailed here.

Ms Gallagher: Read the last line.

MR SMYTH: We always go to the last line:

Other material is being considered in the context …

So there is the contradiction: the government has been planning this since 2002 and all of that work is now commercial-in-confidence.

Ms Gallagher: No—wrong!

MR SMYTH: The minister says I am wrong.

Ms Gallagher: You are—again.

MR SMYTH: Well, if it is not, then table it. And the reason you will not table it is that it does not exist. And the reason that it does not exist is that you have not done the work. Otherwise—

Ms Gallagher: Wrong! I can’t wait. This is just going to be too good when it all gets tabled.

MR SMYTH: Oh! It is going to be too good when it all comes out. There you go: “when it all comes out”, which I think means “after the deal”. It is quite clear from the article last week and the minister’s attitude that this was never going to come to the Assembly. But, under pressure, she has checked and what she has now found, and what she should have known, is that section 6 of the FMA reads:

No payment of public moneys must be made otherwise than in accordance with an appropriation.

We do not have an appropriation for this because it was not included—


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