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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 1 Hansard (13 February) . . Page.. 11 ..

MR QUINLAN (continuing):

Government instrumentalities can be priced out of a contract for maintenance. They then gear down, because they obviously cannot keep the equipment and staff associated with that work. They are no longer in the game. (Extension of time granted.) And all of a sudden the government is effectively competitively priced out of an exercise. You cannot take a loss in order to gain long-term business. Once priced out of it, the government all of a sudden finds itself at the mercy of one or two contractors, and we end up paying more for that. There are examples of that around the territory now.

I refer to a curious claim that the incinerator at Totalcare can be rejigged so there are zero emissions. We recommended that government examine the situation and confirm that that is the case before pursuing business outside the ACT for that incinerator and perhaps becoming a net importer of pollution.

We recommended to government that they adopt a strategy to maximise the potential for local industries to participate in the development of Kingston foreshore. We recognise that planning parameters dictate that we want some conformity and that we do not want it to turn into a bitty development. I have said before in this place that I am not particularly enamoured of Kingston as it stands today, because of the piecemeal way it has been redeveloped. However, we would still like to see local industry get the maximum chance to participate in that Kingston development. Obviously today there are some other revelations in relation to land release on the south side that may impact upon the Kingston foreshore.

We recommended that the government undertake a review of the Australian International Hotel School, as we recommended in our report of last year, as a matter of urgency.

We further recommended that the business interests of members of boards and directors of territory-owned corporations that have a commercial role be quite clearly declared in annual reports.

I thank the Assembly for receiving the report. I recommend that it be adopted, and I recommend that the government take note of the full suite of recommendations in the report. They have not been put together lightly. The committee, within the limited space of time I referred to earlier, did a fairly firm job of examining the suite of annual reports that was presented to it.

Debate (on motion by Mr Smyth ) adjourned to the next sitting.

Health and Community Care-Standing Committee

Report No 8

MR WOOD (11.16): Mr Speaker, I present the following report:

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