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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 12 Hansard (24 November) . . Page.. 3552 ..
MR STANHOPE (continuing):
Mr Speaker, we are entitled to know what response the Government has made to this recommendation of the coroner. We are entitled to ask what work the company has won from the Government both before and particularly since the demolition of the hospital. We are entitled to ask whether the coroner was correct to assume that the company held a favoured position with the Government; and if it did, why.
Project Coordination was appointed to a key position in the implosion project. It was an appointment that led directly to the further appointment of contractors the coroner has found were incompetent in the chosen demolition method and incompetent in the supervision of it. We are entitled to know how the tender system came to be so corrupted in this way and to ask who should be held accountable.
Mr Speaker, there were two contracts associated with the implosion that were the subject of the coroner's interest. If we are entitled to answers about the first - the appointment of Project Coordination to the project manager's job - then we are certainly entitled to answers about the second, which is the final tender for the demolition contract, and the only one who can answer responsibly is the Chief Minister.
The coroner's comments about the first of his contract investigations were damning. His criticism of the second is scathing and goes to the heart of this Government. At its essence is surely the most fundamental tenet of government contracting - the need for absolute integrity. Government simply must stay at arms length from decisions about procurement if integrity is to be preserved and if perceptions about integrity are to be protected. Yet the coroner refers to evidence given to the inquest by Mrs Carnell to the effect that she had discussed with her media adviser, a senior member of her personal staff, some days before the contract was let details of the price differential between tenderers. The coroner makes no comment, and was not in a position to do so, on whether such discussions were normal practice in the Chief Minister's office - or, indeed, in her department - but we are entitled to ask the question and are deserving of an answer. The coroner made the point:
Mrs Carnell agreed that this aspect of the tender process had not been negotiated at arms length from the government officials. There is no doubt that this particular aspect of the tender process should have been conducted in a more responsible manner in terms of its independence from the Government.
Who were the others, apart from the media adviser, that the coroner said had access to the same information? How did they come to have that information? From whom did they obtain it? Was it, and is it still, normal practice for Ministers, ministerial staff and government officials not involved in tendering processes to have access to such information? Is that how business is still done in this Government? Those are important questions. The coroner makes quite clear how important they are. He says:
Parties are said to negotiate at arms length when one is not under the control or influence of the other. If the parties are not at arms length the possibility of some form of undue influence being exerted by one
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