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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 12 Hansard (24 November) . . Page.. 3636 ..
MS CARNELL (continuing):
something was wrong and we had done nothing about it, I have to say that there would not be a need for this no-confidence motion today because, as Mr Humphries said, I would not be here right now. If somebody from the department or anywhere else had said, "Look, Kate, there is a problem here", and I had said, "Pay no attention to it, sweep it under the carpet, let us just get on with it", then my colleagues here would have had me out the door very quickly, but they would not have had to do so because I would have been out all by myself.
But that is not what happened, and the coroner found that not to be the case. My colleagues and I did not know that there was any chance at all of a problem. If we had, would Mr Humphries have been on the lake in a boat with his kids? Of course not. That was categorically backed up by the coroner in his final report when he said:
The ACT had an expectancy that it was able to rely upon processes which had been set in place on and after December 1996. Totalcare had been appointed as the Project Director. Totalcare possessed a degree of technical and engineering expertise in the Capital Works area. It had inherited that function from its former connection with the Department of Urban Services. The Territory was entitled to proceed upon the basis that Totalcare would take all the requisite steps including the obtaining of such expert advice as was necessary to allow the project to proceed efficiently, safely and effectively.
Again, Mr Speaker, the coroner's words: It was appropriate for the ACT to have the expectancy that Totalcare would proceed efficiently with the project and would get any expertise they needed, just as they do on every other project. We do lots of dangerous projects in the ACT. We do roads, we do bridges, we do all sorts of things that could cause death if inefficient contractors do the work. But we assume, and rightly so under normal circumstances, that Totalcare will get the appropriate expertise. So much for the comments and suggestions of those opposite that somehow I was responsible for the fact that Totalcare, or whomever, did not have the expertise.
If I did get involved in contracting approaches, in the actual letting of contracts, members of this Assembly would have a motion on the notice paper in two minutes - "Shock, horror, Minister involved, hands all over contracting procedures, at odds with the whole approach that the Government has taken to arms-length contracting, naughty government must get hands off the contracting process" - because the whole basis of our contracting is that the Government is required to do it at arms length.
Mr Corbell: Like the hospice.
MS CARNELL: Just like the hospice. But those opposite are not being logical here. It is inappropriate for governments to be involved in contracting.
Mr Stanhope has made some absolutely remarkable comments with regard to what he called a corrupt contracting approach. That is not what the coroner says, not even a little bit, Mr Speaker. This is a really good example of what Mr Stanhope has done. If the coroner had said that the contracting approach was corrupt, Mr Stanhope would be right
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