Page 2665 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 28 June 2011
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information on forthcoming projects. The new capital works call tender schedule is in development and will be launched in the coming weeks.
Procurement training is, likewise, an ongoing activity. For example currently there are approximately 40 officers participating in training in either Certificate IV in Government (Procurement) or Advanced Diploma in Government (Strategic Procurement). In addition seven senior Shared Services Procurement officers are about to embark on university studies in sustainable procurement. These officers will promulgate their newly acquired knowledge to help build on the government’s achievement of sustainability outcomes.
The government is conscious of the strategic role that procurement can play in achieving economic, social and environmental sustainability for the territory and has considered the recommendations of the report carefully. The two recommendations that the government has not agreed to relate to a review of the long service leave and work safety bodies that has already been undertaken and an amendment to the Government Procurement Act 2001 that would add sustainability to the value for money principle.
The government’s view is that sustainability is already covered by the requirement to consider whole of life costing as part of the value for money assessment required under the Procurement Act. The actions arising from the government’s response to the report will build upon the procurement reforms that the government has implemented in recent years in improving transparency of the procurement process and help to ensure value for money from territory purchasing.
MS LE COUTEUR (Molonglo) (3.34): Mr Speaker, I just want to briefly comment on the government’s response. In general I am very pleased that virtually all of these recommendations have been agreed to. I note that Ms Hunter has a motion on the notice paper for tomorrow talking about social procurement so I will not talk about that because there will be plenty of time tomorrow.
What I will talk about is sustainability, which relates to recommendation 18 and associated ones which the government did not agree to and where the government believes that currently enough effort is being put into sustainability. I have to say personally, and I am sure the rest of the Greens would agree with me, that the government is not putting enough effort into sustainability and whole of life considerations in procurement.
The government has presented no evidence to suggest that this statement is true and I simply think that the government should have taken a bit more notice of what the committee said. If the government feels that at present it is currently optimising whole of life, it really should give a lot more evidence to show this. And whole of life from the point of view of who? Certainly it does not appear to be whole of life from the point of view of the whole ACT community. Apart from that, I thank the government for its contribution.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
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