The Prime Minister, Paul Keating, had to either acknowledge he had made a paper fortune of $3.8 million or acknowledge that the accounts of his half-owned piggery company were wrong, the Senate was told yesterday.
The Opposition spokesman on the arts, Senator Michael Baume, said, “”Mr Keating has denied on television that he has made a paper fortune. He said that one had to be able to read a balance sheet to understand. I have news for Mr Keating: people who know very well how to read a balance sheet confirm exactly this problem. If Mr Keating had not made this paper fortune, he has to deny the accounts; he has to demonstrate that the accounts are shonky.
“”Mr Keating cannot get away with saying both that the accounts are correct and that he did not turn the ($430,000) investment into $4.2 million.”
The latest accounts revealed the incredible way that the $430,000 had turned into $4.2 million, he said.
“”As The Canberra Times pointed out this morning, how they manage to revalue their piggery properties by $4.1 million while they are continuing to make significant _ $1{ million _ losses would be beyond most rational people,” he said. “”No doubt Mr Keating has an explanation.”
He said that the Press Gallery with one or two honourable exceptions had been terrorised by Mr Keating into not running the story.
“”The Canberra Times is one of the few newspapers in Australia with courage to print the facts about this piggery group,” he said.
Journalists and editors had been personally rung up and abused if they dared print anything.
In Question Time, Senator Baume, asked, “”Why has Mr Keating permitted companies of which he is a half owner and on which his nominee is a director to submit annual returns to the ASC which are both false and unaudited, in breach of the law and which require corrections demanded by the ASC?”
The Leader of the Government in the Senate, Senator Button, replied that this had been the 19th question Senator Baume had asked this year, and not one had been on his shadow portfolio. Senator Baume was doing the dirty work of the Leader of the Opposition, John Hewson, who wanted to stay Mr Clean. An earlier allegation was that Mr Keating had intervened in the foreign-investment process (when Danish interests had sought to invest in Australian piggeries) had been proven a demonstrable untruth.
He said that matters between ASC and companies were matters for them to resolve and not for the Senate.
Senator Austin Lewis (Lib, Vic) asked Senator Button whether if a “”company revalued its assets so that the value of your share increase by $3.8million would you consider that to be a bribe?”
The question was objected to as being hypothetical, but Senator Button said he hadn’t bought any shares in any company.
Senator Lewis asked a supplementary: “”Are you aware that Brown and Hatton revalued its assets in such a way that the value of the Prime Minister’s shares increased by $3.8 million? Are you aware of that, and do you believe it to be a bribe?”
Senator Button said he was sad to see “”you have joined the snail trail” started by Senator Baume. Whenever the Opposition got into trouble in the polls it started to go the grubby route. It had started Question Time on the unemployed, but it didn’t care about the unemployed “”only about denigrating the Prime Minister”.