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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-12-02 Daily Xml
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BRIBERY INVESTIGATION

Ms CHAPMAN (Bragg) (15:10): My question is to the Minister for Transport. When was the minister first made aware of the police investigation in respect of bribery being conducted into his department?

The Hon. P.F. CONLON (Elder—Minister for Transport, Minister for Infrastructure, Minister for Energy) (15:10): What did that show say: 'How does that member get it so wrong?' I saw her comments on this the other day, when she implied that some matters in the Auditor-General's Report that I had answered were not accurate because these were the matters being investigated by the police. That is utterly, utterly wrong; completely—

Ms Chapman interjecting:

The Hon. P.F. CONLON: That is what you said on the Leon Byner show. We read it. I will go and ask the chief executive of the department when he first gave me a briefing on it, just so the member understands. There is something else she had not got right, and I will come to that at the conclusion.

What happened was that the TRUMP system that she so happily criticised in here had provisions in it that were able to detect an anomaly if it occurred. I think, from memory, the anomaly was about $15. I do not have the exact details on this, and I will come to the reason for that at the end. That anomaly—a very small one—was detected by the system. Our people investigated it and were concerned—or the people in the department were, and then passed it on to the police. The police then conducted a thorough investigation. They briefed our chief executive and, as I understand it, we cooperated fully with them, and then they concluded an extremely successful investigation.

This is what was said by the member for Bragg, that when we were talking about the Auditor-General's Report we should have disclosed the police investigation. Of course, the police said, 'Don't do that, because we would like to catch all of these people. We would like to catch them all.' So, the system worked and identified the anomaly—144 charges. Basically, we did what the police asked, and I think the facts show that what we did was absolutely correct.

As I said, I will find out for the member precisely when the chief executive first told me, but I would not have been the first person he told, because the last thing she got wrong was that these are employees of Services SA, not the department of transport. They are not transport employees: they are employees of Services SA under the responsibility of minister Gago in another place. I assume she might have been told before, but I do not know. However, I will check for the member.

For the member for Bragg to suggest that what she would have done if she were a minister is ignore the police and come into this place and say, 'I don't care what the police say. I'm going to tell everyone all about it and bugger up the police investigation,' all I can say is: what a grotesquely irresponsible individual.

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