Page 1733 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 7 June 2022
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Canberra Institute of Technology—procurement
MS LEE (Kurrajong—Leader of the Opposition) (2.57), by leave: I move:
That the Assembly:
(1) notes that:
(a) Canberra Institute of Technology (CIT) receives the majority of its funding from the ACT Government, and is accountable to Canberra taxpayers;
(b) CIT has awarded seven contracts for consultancy services valued at $8.87 million since 2017 to one individual and their associated business entities;
(c) three of the contracts were sole-sourced, and four went to open tender. The same individual and their associated business entities continued to win each tender;
(d) the value of contracts has steadily escalated since 2017;
(e) one of the earliest contracts in 2017 was valued at $86 280.58; the contract in 2022 was valued at $4 999 990.00;
(f) the daily cost of contracted services has risen from $1058.82 per day in 2017 to $9980.02 per day for the contract signed in March 2022, plus associated travel and related costs;
(g) despite these steeply increasing costs, the services provided by the contractor have not substantially changed over the same period of time;
(h) the services provided by the contractor are predominantly mentoring and workshops for the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and executive team;
(i) in 2019, CIT ignored a request from the Government Procurement Board to provide them with an update related to these procurements;
(j) it is not clear, and there is very little publicly available information as to what outcomes or results have been delivered by the contractor;
(k) the contract documents for these procurements do not contain information that would otherwise normally be included in ACT Government contracts for consultancy services, such as:
(i) names of specified personnel providing the services;
(ii) hourly or daily rates;
(iii) milestone payment amounts and dates; and
(iv) defined deliverables and due dates; and
(2) calls on the ACT Government to:
(a) commission an independent, comprehensive audit of this series of procurements made by CIT, to determine:
(i) whether CIT requires the services;
(ii) whether procurement processes were unbiased;
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