❓ The Minister for Planning and Infrastructure expresses frustration that the Leader of the Opposition has denied access to documents related to the Westrail sale, hindering efforts to understand and rectify a deal that has cost the state $400 million. The Minister highlights concerns about the poorly drafted contract and its implications for the state's finances.
AnsweredQoN 64Legislative Assembly
QuestionView source ↗
WESTRAIL SALE — RELEASE OF DOCUMENTS
I understand that the Department of the Premier and Cabinet has written to the Leader of the Opposition requesting the release of documents relating to the sale of Westrail. Will the minister please inform the house of what revelations these documents have provided? Ms A.J.G. MacTIERNAN
I understand that the Department of the Premier and Cabinet has written to the Leader of the Opposition requesting the release of documents relating to the sale of Westrail. Will the minister please inform the house of what revelations these documents have provided? Ms A.J.G. MacTIERNAN
AnswerView source ↗
Unfortunately, I have no good news in this regard because, notwithstanding a great deal of pontificating about the government being excessively secretive, the Leader of the Opposition has denied our request to have access to these documents. I would like just to get the context clear here. We are talking about the sale of a major government asset that has left this state facing a bill of some $400 million, if we are not to see a very substantial proportion of that rail line closed down. The transaction saw the sale of the whole rail freight network and business at a loss, which we then had to come in and pay out. Some $300 million was left outstanding after the sale of this asset. We are not asking for cabinet submissions or what went to cabinet. We are trying to understand how this sale got to where it was, because we are now trying to repair the situation. Normally, we would go in, research documents and get some idea of how something had happened, but all the documentation that led up to the decision to sell it, the preparation of the tender documents and all the documentation that was involved in the assessment of the contracts and the negotiation of the contracts has been covered in this veil of cabinet secrecy. We understand that while the then government was in the process of negotiating that contract, it would not have wanted, for reasons of protecting the state’s interests, to have those documents revealed. However, although we are faced with a bill of $400 million and we want to understand this sale transaction, what undertakings were given and whether they were official or unofficial, we have no access to those documents. I stress that we are not even asking for any of the real cabinet documents, submissions or comment sheets. We are quite happy for all those people who had Wesfarmers shares to keep their secrets. We are asking to see documents that would normally be available to government—rooms and rooms of material that is currently available to government — Several members interjected. The SPEAKER : Order! I call the Leader of the Opposition and the member for Capel to order. Ms A.J.G. MacTIERNAN : We began to think that there must be something severely wrong when the persons who acquired the interest from the then government on-sold that business. We found that the contract was so poorly drafted that the person who drafted it could not even have done contract law 101. The contract was so poorly drafted that the state had no opportunity to have any say over the assignment of those interests. We are now left in the bizarre situation as a state government in which we are guarantors for cross-border leases that are held by Queensland Rail, which is an agency of the Queensland government. That means that we, the people of Western Australia, are guaranteeing loans and transactions by the Queensland government. That is an extraordinary situation to find ourselves in. We have no way of knowing how we ever got into that particular state. The whole sale of Westrail has been a disgrace. It is even more disgraceful that the Leader of the Opposition refuses to allow us to understand how we got there, to allow us to help try to retrieve the situation.
Ms A.J.G. MacTIERNAN replied: Unfortunately, I have no good news in this regard because, notwithstanding a great deal of pontificating about the government being excessively secretive, the Leader of the Opposition has denied our request to have access to these documents. I would like just to get the context clear here. We are talking about the sale of a major government asset that has left this state facing a bill of some $400 million, if we are not to see a very substantial proportion of that rail line closed down. The transaction saw the sale of the whole rail freight network and business at a loss, which we then had to come in and pay out. Some $300 million was left outstanding after the sale of this asset. We are not asking for cabinet submissions or what went to cabinet. We are trying to understand how this sale got to where it was, because we are now trying to repair the situation. Normally, we would go in, research documents and get some idea of how something had happened, but all the documentation that led up to the decision to sell it, the preparation of the tender documents and all the documentation that was involved in the assessment of the contracts and the negotiation of the contracts has been covered in this veil of cabinet secrecy. We understand that while the then government was in the process of negotiating that contract, it would not have wanted, for reasons of protecting the state’s interests, to have those documents revealed. However, although we are faced with a bill of $400 million and we want to understand this sale transaction, what undertakings were given and whether they were official or unofficial, we have no access to those documents. I stress that we are not even asking for any of the real cabinet documents, submissions or comment sheets. We are quite happy for all those people who had Wesfarmers shares to keep their secrets. We are asking to see documents that would normally be available to government—rooms and rooms of material that is currently available to government — Several members interjected. The SPEAKER : Order! I call the Leader of the Opposition and the member for Capel to order. Ms A.J.G. MacTIERNAN : We began to think that there must be something severely wrong when the persons who acquired the interest from the then government on-sold that business. We found that the contract was so poorly drafted that the person who drafted it could not even have done contract law 101. The contract was so poorly drafted that the state had no opportunity to have any say over the assignment of those interests. We are now left in the bizarre situation as a state government in which we are guarantors for cross-border leases that are held by Queensland Rail, which is an agency of the Queensland government. That means that we, the people of Western Australia, are guaranteeing loans and transactions by the Queensland government. That is an extraordinary situation to find ourselves in. We have no way of knowing how we ever got into that particular state. The whole sale of Westrail has been a disgrace. It is even more disgraceful that the Leader of the Opposition refuses to allow us to understand how we got there, to allow us to help try to retrieve the situation.
Unfortunately, I have no good news in this regard because, notwithstanding a great deal of pontificating about the government being excessively secretive, the Leader of the Opposition has denied our request to have access to these documents. I would like just to get the context clear here. We are talking about the sale of a major government asset that has left this state facing a bill of some $400 million, if we are not to see a very substantial proportion of that rail line closed down. The transaction saw the sale of the whole rail freight network and business at a loss, which we then had to come in and pay out. Some $300 million was left outstanding after the sale of this asset. We are not asking for cabinet submissions or what went to cabinet. We are trying to understand how this sale got to where it was, because we are now trying to repair the situation. Normally, we would go in, research documents and get some idea of how something had happened, but all the documentation that led up to the decision to sell it, the preparation of the tender documents and all the documentation that was involved in the assessment of the contracts and the negotiation of the contracts has been covered in this veil of cabinet secrecy. We understand that while the then government was in the process of negotiating that contract, it would not have wanted, for reasons of protecting the state’s interests, to have those documents revealed. However, although we are faced with a bill of $400 million and we want to understand this sale transaction, what undertakings were given and whether they were official or unofficial, we have no access to those documents. I stress that we are not even asking for any of the real cabinet documents, submissions or comment sheets. We are quite happy for all those people who had Wesfarmers shares to keep their secrets. We are asking to see documents that would normally be available to government—rooms and rooms of material that is currently available to government — Several members interjected. The SPEAKER : Order! I call the Leader of the Opposition and the member for Capel to order. Ms A.J.G. MacTIERNAN : We began to think that there must be something severely wrong when the persons who acquired the interest from the then government on-sold that business. We found that the contract was so poorly drafted that the person who drafted it could not even have done contract law 101. The contract was so poorly drafted that the state had no opportunity to have any say over the assignment of those interests. We are now left in the bizarre situation as a state government in which we are guarantors for cross-border leases that are held by Queensland Rail, which is an agency of the Queensland government. That means that we, the people of Western Australia, are guaranteeing loans and transactions by the Queensland government. That is an extraordinary situation to find ourselves in. We have no way of knowing how we ever got into that particular state. The whole sale of Westrail has been a disgrace. It is even more disgraceful that the Leader of the Opposition refuses to allow us to understand how we got there, to allow us to help try to retrieve the situation.
Several members interjected. The SPEAKER : Order! I call the Leader of the Opposition and the member for Capel to order. Ms A.J.G. MacTIERNAN : We began to think that there must be something severely wrong when the persons who acquired the interest from the then government on-sold that business. We found that the contract was so poorly drafted that the person who drafted it could not even have done contract law 101. The contract was so poorly drafted that the state had no opportunity to have any say over the assignment of those interests. We are now left in the bizarre situation as a state government in which we are guarantors for cross-border leases that are held by Queensland Rail, which is an agency of the Queensland government. That means that we, the people of Western Australia, are guaranteeing loans and transactions by the Queensland government. That is an extraordinary situation to find ourselves in. We have no way of knowing how we ever got into that particular state. The whole sale of Westrail has been a disgrace. It is even more disgraceful that the Leader of the Opposition refuses to allow us to understand how we got there, to allow us to help try to retrieve the situation.
The SPEAKER : Order! I call the Leader of the Opposition and the member for Capel to order. Ms A.J.G. MacTIERNAN : We began to think that there must be something severely wrong when the persons who acquired the interest from the then government on-sold that business. We found that the contract was so poorly drafted that the person who drafted it could not even have done contract law 101. The contract was so poorly drafted that the state had no opportunity to have any say over the assignment of those interests. We are now left in the bizarre situation as a state government in which we are guarantors for cross-border leases that are held by Queensland Rail, which is an agency of the Queensland government. That means that we, the people of Western Australia, are guaranteeing loans and transactions by the Queensland government. That is an extraordinary situation to find ourselves in. We have no way of knowing how we ever got into that particular state. The whole sale of Westrail has been a disgrace. It is even more disgraceful that the Leader of the Opposition refuses to allow us to understand how we got there, to allow us to help try to retrieve the situation.
Ms A.J.G. MacTIERNAN : We began to think that there must be something severely wrong when the persons who acquired the interest from the then government on-sold that business. We found that the contract was so poorly drafted that the person who drafted it could not even have done contract law 101. The contract was so poorly drafted that the state had no opportunity to have any say over the assignment of those interests. We are now left in the bizarre situation as a state government in which we are guarantors for cross-border leases that are held by Queensland Rail, which is an agency of the Queensland government. That means that we, the people of Western Australia, are guaranteeing loans and transactions by the Queensland government. That is an extraordinary situation to find ourselves in. We have no way of knowing how we ever got into that particular state. The whole sale of Westrail has been a disgrace. It is even more disgraceful that the Leader of the Opposition refuses to allow us to understand how we got there, to allow us to help try to retrieve the situation.
Ms A.J.G. MacTIERNAN replied: Unfortunately, I have no good news in this regard because, notwithstanding a great deal of pontificating about the government being excessively secretive, the Leader of the Opposition has denied our request to have access to these documents. I would like just to get the context clear here. We are talking about the sale of a major government asset that has left this state facing a bill of some $400 million, if we are not to see a very substantial proportion of that rail line closed down. The transaction saw the sale of the whole rail freight network and business at a loss, which we then had to come in and pay out. Some $300 million was left outstanding after the sale of this asset. We are not asking for cabinet submissions or what went to cabinet. We are trying to understand how this sale got to where it was, because we are now trying to repair the situation. Normally, we would go in, research documents and get some idea of how something had happened, but all the documentation that led up to the decision to sell it, the preparation of the tender documents and all the documentation that was involved in the assessment of the contracts and the negotiation of the contracts has been covered in this veil of cabinet secrecy. We understand that while the then government was in the process of negotiating that contract, it would not have wanted, for reasons of protecting the state’s interests, to have those documents revealed. However, although we are faced with a bill of $400 million and we want to understand this sale transaction, what undertakings were given and whether they were official or unofficial, we have no access to those documents. I stress that we are not even asking for any of the real cabinet documents, submissions or comment sheets. We are quite happy for all those people who had Wesfarmers shares to keep their secrets. We are asking to see documents that would normally be available to government—rooms and rooms of material that is currently available to government — Several members interjected. The SPEAKER : Order! I call the Leader of the Opposition and the member for Capel to order. Ms A.J.G. MacTIERNAN : We began to think that there must be something severely wrong when the persons who acquired the interest from the then government on-sold that business. We found that the contract was so poorly drafted that the person who drafted it could not even have done contract law 101. The contract was so poorly drafted that the state had no opportunity to have any say over the assignment of those interests. We are now left in the bizarre situation as a state government in which we are guarantors for cross-border leases that are held by Queensland Rail, which is an agency of the Queensland government. That means that we, the people of Western Australia, are guaranteeing loans and transactions by the Queensland government. That is an extraordinary situation to find ourselves in. We have no way of knowing how we ever got into that particular state. The whole sale of Westrail has been a disgrace. It is even more disgraceful that the Leader of the Opposition refuses to allow us to understand how we got there, to allow us to help try to retrieve the situation.
Unfortunately, I have no good news in this regard because, notwithstanding a great deal of pontificating about the government being excessively secretive, the Leader of the Opposition has denied our request to have access to these documents. I would like just to get the context clear here. We are talking about the sale of a major government asset that has left this state facing a bill of some $400 million, if we are not to see a very substantial proportion of that rail line closed down. The transaction saw the sale of the whole rail freight network and business at a loss, which we then had to come in and pay out. Some $300 million was left outstanding after the sale of this asset. We are not asking for cabinet submissions or what went to cabinet. We are trying to understand how this sale got to where it was, because we are now trying to repair the situation. Normally, we would go in, research documents and get some idea of how something had happened, but all the documentation that led up to the decision to sell it, the preparation of the tender documents and all the documentation that was involved in the assessment of the contracts and the negotiation of the contracts has been covered in this veil of cabinet secrecy. We understand that while the then government was in the process of negotiating that contract, it would not have wanted, for reasons of protecting the state’s interests, to have those documents revealed. However, although we are faced with a bill of $400 million and we want to understand this sale transaction, what undertakings were given and whether they were official or unofficial, we have no access to those documents. I stress that we are not even asking for any of the real cabinet documents, submissions or comment sheets. We are quite happy for all those people who had Wesfarmers shares to keep their secrets. We are asking to see documents that would normally be available to government—rooms and rooms of material that is currently available to government — Several members interjected. The SPEAKER : Order! I call the Leader of the Opposition and the member for Capel to order. Ms A.J.G. MacTIERNAN : We began to think that there must be something severely wrong when the persons who acquired the interest from the then government on-sold that business. We found that the contract was so poorly drafted that the person who drafted it could not even have done contract law 101. The contract was so poorly drafted that the state had no opportunity to have any say over the assignment of those interests. We are now left in the bizarre situation as a state government in which we are guarantors for cross-border leases that are held by Queensland Rail, which is an agency of the Queensland government. That means that we, the people of Western Australia, are guaranteeing loans and transactions by the Queensland government. That is an extraordinary situation to find ourselves in. We have no way of knowing how we ever got into that particular state. The whole sale of Westrail has been a disgrace. It is even more disgraceful that the Leader of the Opposition refuses to allow us to understand how we got there, to allow us to help try to retrieve the situation.
Several members interjected. The SPEAKER : Order! I call the Leader of the Opposition and the member for Capel to order. Ms A.J.G. MacTIERNAN : We began to think that there must be something severely wrong when the persons who acquired the interest from the then government on-sold that business. We found that the contract was so poorly drafted that the person who drafted it could not even have done contract law 101. The contract was so poorly drafted that the state had no opportunity to have any say over the assignment of those interests. We are now left in the bizarre situation as a state government in which we are guarantors for cross-border leases that are held by Queensland Rail, which is an agency of the Queensland government. That means that we, the people of Western Australia, are guaranteeing loans and transactions by the Queensland government. That is an extraordinary situation to find ourselves in. We have no way of knowing how we ever got into that particular state. The whole sale of Westrail has been a disgrace. It is even more disgraceful that the Leader of the Opposition refuses to allow us to understand how we got there, to allow us to help try to retrieve the situation.
The SPEAKER : Order! I call the Leader of the Opposition and the member for Capel to order. Ms A.J.G. MacTIERNAN : We began to think that there must be something severely wrong when the persons who acquired the interest from the then government on-sold that business. We found that the contract was so poorly drafted that the person who drafted it could not even have done contract law 101. The contract was so poorly drafted that the state had no opportunity to have any say over the assignment of those interests. We are now left in the bizarre situation as a state government in which we are guarantors for cross-border leases that are held by Queensland Rail, which is an agency of the Queensland government. That means that we, the people of Western Australia, are guaranteeing loans and transactions by the Queensland government. That is an extraordinary situation to find ourselves in. We have no way of knowing how we ever got into that particular state. The whole sale of Westrail has been a disgrace. It is even more disgraceful that the Leader of the Opposition refuses to allow us to understand how we got there, to allow us to help try to retrieve the situation.
Ms A.J.G. MacTIERNAN : We began to think that there must be something severely wrong when the persons who acquired the interest from the then government on-sold that business. We found that the contract was so poorly drafted that the person who drafted it could not even have done contract law 101. The contract was so poorly drafted that the state had no opportunity to have any say over the assignment of those interests. We are now left in the bizarre situation as a state government in which we are guarantors for cross-border leases that are held by Queensland Rail, which is an agency of the Queensland government. That means that we, the people of Western Australia, are guaranteeing loans and transactions by the Queensland government. That is an extraordinary situation to find ourselves in. We have no way of knowing how we ever got into that particular state. The whole sale of Westrail has been a disgrace. It is even more disgraceful that the Leader of the Opposition refuses to allow us to understand how we got there, to allow us to help try to retrieve the situation.
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