Gillman Land Sale

Ms CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (14:56): Further supplementary, sir: in the circumstances where the Attorney cannot recall whether he was at the meeting, the subject of which he has outlined, will he check his records to identify if he did attend, and also advise the house, if he was there, why he was there at the time dealing with the assessment of the ACP deal?

The Hon. J.R. RAU (Enfield—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General, Minister for Justice Reform, Minister for Planning, Minister for Housing and Urban Development, Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister for Child Protection Reform) (14:57): Mr Speaker, I came into parliament this session hoping that I would never, ever again quote Donald Rumsfeld, and I am going to stick to it today.

Members interjecting:

The Hon. J.R. RAU: I am going to stick to it today, but I can say this to the member for Bragg: again, I anticipated the member for Bragg might ask me something about this when I saw—

Ms Chapman: But you didn't check your diary.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Hang on, you are going to like this. I like to be ahead of the member for Bragg as much as I can be, and so I said to my office this morning, 'Look, I suspect it is possible the member for Bragg, having read this, might ask me this question. Can you just check if there is anything in my thing—'

Ms Chapman: Diary.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Diary thing, yes—it is in one of those machines in the office. It is not actually a diary, it is more like a machine, I think. Anyway, I asked them to check, and the advice that I was given late this morning or early this afternoon was that there was no record of me being at such a meeting on that day—

Members interjecting:

The Hon. J.R. RAU: —and that lack of a record accords with my lack of recollection, because the two of them coming together in such a way—

Mr Pisoni interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Unley is warned for the second and final time.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: —suggests that even if there was such an event, about which I have no recollection, it was obviously not sufficiently relevant to be entered into the diary, and it does not surprise me that I do not have any particular recollection of it. But, that is not to say that it did not happen, because it could have happened. Who can say? I make the point that I did ask my office to check, and the result of the check was—

Mr Marshall: Why wasn't it in the diary?

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Well, there is a number of potential—the honourable Leader of the Opposition asks, 'Why wasn't it in the diary?' There are, as a matter of logic, a multitude of answers to that: one might have been because it did not happen; one might have been because it happened on another day; one might have been because I was walking down the street that day thinking that I was going to get a bowl of soup from the shop across the road and somebody said to me, 'Hey, I'm going to visit the Premier and the Treasurer; do you want to come for a walk with me?' I do not remember. I am just saying there is a multiplicity of possible reasons and yet at the end of it—

The Hon. J.W. Weatherill: We supported this.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: As the Premier says, we are not running away from the fact that cabinet said yes to this thing. One of the problems with the way this is proceeding is, every time there is a question like this asked, the default position is to go to the conspiracy theory version of what might have happened.

The Hon. A. Koutsantonis: Area 51.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: It is Area 51, it is Roswell, it is Neil Armstrong in Universal Studios.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The members for Kaurna and Taylor are called to order.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: The government has never ever said that the government did not make this decision. The cabinet made the decision.

Mr Marshall: You said it was Renewal SA and the Premier said it was his decision.

The SPEAKER: The Leader of the Opposition is warned a first time. The Deputy Premier has lost his train of thought and he is out of time. Final supplementary, member for Bragg.