Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Gallagher is almost right when she talks about the government's willingness to enter into an arrangement to forgo millions of dollars in tax revenue in order to benefit political mates—but you are out by 29 years, Senator Gallagher, as I will explain in a few moments.

The genesis of the background of this scenario goes back to 1987 and beyond, to the then stock market crash during the time of Mr Brian Burke as the Premier of Western Australia. It was a time when Burke and his mates—Bond, Connell, Holmes a Court and others—ran Western Australia like their own personal fiefdom. We then go to 1988, when Mr Robert Holmes a Court owned the Bell Group. Do you know what the Bell Group was? It was largely involved in heavy transport—a big cash cow. Holmes a Court owns the Bell Group, but of course as a result of the 1987 stock market crash he has gone bad. To whom does he turn? He turns to his mate Burke, now managing probably the most rotten government ever—a Labor government—since this state was developed. I know Senator Sterle will not agree with me.

What happened? The deal was done. On behalf of the Western Australian community and Bond, the Bond Group bought the assets of the Bell Group. Then, of course, as we know, by 1991 she goes to the wall, and of course it goes into liquidation. Who then was asked to pick up the cost of this whole exercise? None other than the Western Australian community, through a levy on third-party vehicle insurance. Senator Sterle assured me earlier that this was history; it had all finished. It has not finished. It is ongoing to this very day.

Let me explain to Senator Gallagher why it is that she is quite right—that there was a willingness on the part of a government to enter into an arrangement to forego millions of dollars in tax revenue. By 1992-93, the Premier of the state was Ms Carmen Lawrence. Her brother, Bevan Lawrence, made the point publicly that his estimate at that time, in 1990, was that the efforts of the Burke government—the corruption and the rot that was the Burke Labor government—had cost the taxpayers of Western Australia some $600 million. In today's dollars that is $1.2 billion. That was the brother of the Premier of the state who said we had to have a royal commission into the rot that was the Western Australian Burke—followed by Dowding, followed by Lawrence—Labor government. Senator Gallagher could not have known how right she was, because in 1987, in evidence to the royal commission that became known as the WA Inc. royal commission, forced upon Premier Lawrence partially by her own brother but also by academics and even, by then, journalists in Western Australia—