Page 3335 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 19 August 2009
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the Labor Club Group has raised these issues, has raised the issue about site interference, and we have the Chief Minister publicly stating that he believes it is their asset and that they own it. If he believes it, and if, from the reports we have seen, the national executive believe that they own it—it is referred to as half the Labor Party’s national asset base—then the question that needs to be investigated is: how is that played out? How is that played out in terms of directions to the board? How does that play out for independence of board members in acting according to their duties?
These are the very serious issues which Mr Hatch has raised. These are the issues which simply need to be investigated, and need to be investigated in an independent way. Unfortunately, with this amendment, what we have, first and foremost, is a failure even to require the most basic accountability and openness from this government, who have shown that they will, at every opportunity, seek to avoid being open and giving a full and frank account to the Assembly. They are not going to do it out of goodwill. We can take that as a given. We saw it again yesterday. They are not going to do it because they want to; they will do it because we make them. They will do it because we force them to. And it is reasonable that we call for that.
It is very hard to justify and we have heard nothing, not one word in Ms Hunter’s speech, as to why she and the Greens do not agree with paragraph (5), which calls on all ministers of the ACT government to make full and frank disclosures of any involvement they, their staff or their representatives may have had in influencing the decision-making process of the Labor Club board.
Why would you be against that? Why would you be against that openness and that disclosure? Surely, that is the beginning. As I said earlier, when we started this week, we said that what we need is for the government to answer some of these questions. They have done their best to avoid answering the questions. We had the five-minute speech from Ms Gallagher in which she gave a brief reflection on the gaming act and nothing else. We have had no openness and accountability. What this calls for is that, and what this calls for is for all the issues to be put on the table. We said that, after that process, we would look at whether it was appropriate for the Assembly to investigate it—and it may well be, depending on what comes from this process.
What we are getting at the moment is a roadblock from the government. They are refusing to answer questions and refusing to put the information on the record. Now we are seeing that the Labor Party and the Greens will vote to oppose a paragraph in the motion which simply calls for full and frank disclosure. We understand why the Labor Party would want to do that but we do not understand why the Greens would support that. We do not support Ms Hunter’s amendment, although, as I say, in the end it would be better to have some motion passed than none.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (12.27): This is a very important issue because it goes to the heart of the way that this community manages its gaming machines and it goes to the heart of the way that gaming machines are managed for the benefit of the community. We have spent a lot of time in successive Assemblies ensuring that the profits from gaming machines go back to the community as much as possible. What we appear to be seeing in this unseemly spectacle that is unfolding in relation to the possible sale of the Labor clubs is that there is the potential for large amounts of poker machine profits to go into the hands of an organisation which is not generally recognised as being part of the broad community.
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