Sue Neales Mercury
IN an extraordinary decision, Premier Paul Lennon has refused to release a key government report relating to the Tasmanian Compliance Corporation scandal to the Legislative Council. Premier Paul Lennon yesterday told Legislative Councillor Paul Harriss, who is chairman of the Upper House’s select committee into building practitioner accreditation, that he would not hand over the critical KPMG report on the troubled TCC to the Legislative Council inquiry, as it had formally requested. Mr Lennon’s refusal to provide the KPMG report to the inquiry may be in contempt of Parliament.
Read more here
What the Libs reckon
Liberal Media Release
Tasmanian Liberal Leader
Will Hodgman, MHA
Thursday October 5, 2006
Deal to keep TCC report secret?
The Premier needs to explain whether his refusal to provide the KPMG Audit of Tasmanian Compliance Corporation to the Parliament is the result of any arrangement with its directors, two former Labor Ministers.
If the government’s agreement with TCC, that led to it surrendering its authorisation to accredit builders, included a provision that the audit never see the light of day, this would be an extraordinary contempt of the Parliament by the Premier.
It has already been revealed that Labor’s deal to end TCC’s authorisation allowed its directors to walk away with an estimated $1 million in fees paid by builders for 12 months’ accreditation to July next year, even though it is expected to cease providing this service from November.
This shows that even while TCC was in its death throes, the Labor Government was doing more secret deals.
It should not be forgotten that from the outset, the government committed to making this report public.
Tasmanian Liberal Leader, Will Hodgman, said his understanding was that Parliamentarians could not be exposed to legal action if they tabled a report in the Parliament under privilege.
“Legal experts such as Dr Michael Stokes confirm this, which begs the question of on what grounds the provision of this document to Parliament could expose any of its elected members to legal action, unless the government had struck a deal with TCC not to provide the report to anyone,” Mr Hodgman said.
The report is highly relevant to the Upper House Select Committee’s investigation of TCC and former Minister, Bryan Green’s, dealings with it.
It would be outrageous if Mr Lennon struck a deal to keep the report secret in light of his so-called commitment to higher levels of accountability and transparency in last week’s State of the State address, particularly if his motives included protecting himself or any of his Ministers.
