Page 4779 - Week 13 - Thursday, 28 November 2019
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September last year and also Ms Cody for the work they have done in a very collaborative way in an area which is quite politically sensitive.
This is a lengthy report; there is no dissent in the report. The report was crafted over a considerable period. The crafting of that is down almost exclusively to Dr Brian Lloyd who I think went through four or five iterations of this report before he and I got it to a place where we thought that it was good enough to bring to the committee. We had about three different approaches on how to structure the report.
This is the first of three reports from the Auditor-General that relate to land sales in the ACT. In the early months of 2020 there will be more on similar issues. In the meantime, I commend the report to the Assembly and again thank my colleagues and Dr Lloyd for the hard for work that went into this report.
MR COE (Yerrabi—Leader of the Opposition) (3.50): This is a very significant report about the ACT government’s lack of transparency and integrity regarding these very controversial land deals that took place a few years ago. There are many unanswered questions, and that is why I made the referral to the Auditor-General a few years ago. That is why the Auditor-General conducted her report. And that is why we now have the Standing Committee on Public Accounts bringing forward its report today.
I draw attention to recommendation 13, that is, that the committee recommends that the ACT Integrity Commission investigate the four acquisitions and any other matters raised in this report. A four-person committee made up of two Liberal MLAs and two Labor MLAs is recommending that deals done by the LDA when Chief Minister Andrew Barr was the responsible minister should be referred to the territory’s ICAC.
This is extraordinarily significant. There are many unanswered questions. This is a scandal that is still unfolding, and I thank the public accounts committee for shedding even more light onto this very sorry matter.
MS CHEYNE (Ginninderra) (3.52): I will echo and underline some of the chair’s comments. She noted that this has been an extraordinarily complex and lengthy inquiry; it was lengthy even for me and I was part of the inquiry for only half the time. Ms Lawder and I joined well after hearings had concluded. As members will see from the 180-page report, it is incredibly complex and there was a significant amount of detail to get across.
I put on the record my thanks particularly to the chair for dealing with the many questions we had to ask or be reminded of from evidence taken during the hearings. While we constructed and deliberated on this report there was patience on all sides. Again, I stress over and over how complex it was, and my thanks go especially to our committee’s secretary, Brian Lloyd.
It is a unanimous report, including all of the recommendations, as Mr Coe pointed out. I note that this is the first report to refer an issue to the ACT Integrity Commission, which commences this weekend. The committee will be forwarding this report to the Integrity Commission in due course.
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