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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 14 Hansard (12 December) . . Page.. 4413 ..
MR STANHOPE (continuing):
Canberra; in fact, the contract stipulates 934 by this date. But the jobs did not eventuate. When Mrs Carnell responded to Mr Kaine, the company had 140 staff on its books and the number has subsequently fallen. I think that it is now down to somewhere between 85 and 100 working in Moore Street and no-one working at the Callam Offices. In fact, the company has sublet the Callam Offices area.
Mr Quinlan: Sublet it?
MR STANHOPE: Yes.
Mr Quinlan: To whom?
MR SPEAKER: Order! Mr Stanhope has the floor.
MR STANHOPE: Anyway, the incentive package was entered into on 14 July 1997 on the basis that the two parties would enter into a five-year strategic partnership. Only one of the achievements was employment, but one of the milestones that Fujitsu was to achieve was to have 934 employees. There were some other things that Fujitsu was going to do and they were agreed in a contract signed on 14 July 1997. I have to say that it was a real blast from the past for me. It actually engendered some real nostalgia in me, this little ripper of a contract signed by Kate Carnell and witnessed by Mick Lilley. It took me back.
Mr Hargreaves: Was John Walker in it?
MR STANHOPE: Actually, you are quite right, it was John Walker who did it. I beg Mick Lilley's pardon. The contract, I believe, was signed by Kate Carnell and witnessed by John Walker, but the amending contract which I am about to come to was signed, I think, by Kate Carnell and witnessed by Mick Lilley.
The original contract was signed on 14 July 1997 on the basis that the two parties would enter into a five-year strategic partnership. That agreement, as I have just indicated, was amended just a couple of months later to reflect that it wasn't a five-year strategic partnership but would be a 12-month strategic partnership. But there was a proviso in this second agreement that replaced the five-year strategic partnership arrangement with a 12-month strategic partnership arrangement that if the parties did not enter into a five-year agreement within a year, that is, by October 1998-I have never seen a clause like this in a contract; it is unique-Fujitsu would be relieved of all of its obligations under the contract, but the territory would remain bound by all of its.
Guess what? There was no contract entered into before October 1998, none, so this clause kicked in. Within a year of signing up to a contract that cost us up front $1 million in refurbishment, $75,000 in relocation, two years rent free and a 10-year payroll tax holiday, we just abandoned it.
Mr Humphries: Which they won't get.
MR STANHOPE
: They have already racked up $1 million in payroll tax holiday. So we are up to $3 million on a contract in which we absolved them of all obligations to deliver a single thing. Guess what? They haven't. This is an amazing contract. I have never seen
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