Page 3782 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 24 August 2011
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we sat through. We had that mammoth hearing where there were 20 people at the table, probably the biggest hearing that the Assembly committee has ever had. There were 10 of them on that side and 10 of us on this side. Even then there was conflicting information being delivered. And even then we were getting material at the last minute. Material that could have helped with the questioning was delivered right at the end of the meeting. That was contemptuous of the committee process and was contemptuous of those that sat there.
This is a reasonable motion. What does the motion call for? The receipt of all documents in relation to the costings and financial analysis on the proposed project. The minister said, “We have given you 16 documents.” The question for the minister is: have you given over all the documents? I suspect the answer is no. “Every single document related to this project has been delivered.” I think not. You can get up and tell me I am wrong. This motion should be supported by the Assembly today. (Time expired.)
MS LE COUTEUR (Molonglo) (3.36): I am very pleased to rise today to talk about the government office block. I must say that I have considerable sympathy for some of the statements from the Liberal Party, but I think they are throwing the baby out with the bathwater. There have been problems with the process and there may yet be problems with the process in the future, but that is not a sufficient reason to say, “No, we’ll just stop work and forget about it,” and not recognise that we actually have an issue with the accommodation that we currently have for the ACT public service. A lot of it is very poor grade and a lot of it is environmentally very poor.
The ACT government has an obligation to have, as Mr Smyth would agree, a strategy for improving accommodation for ACT public servants. That is one of the things that Ms Hunter’s amendment asks for, and that is also one of the things that the public accounts committee asked for. What Ms Hunter will achieve with her amendment is to improve the process, not just say, “It’s all too hard. We should just forget about solving our problems”. There is a problem with ACT government office accommodation. We are not going to just say it is too hard. We are not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We are going to try and improve the process.
I have been following this process for several years through estimates and annual reports hearings. Under the previous Chief Minister, there were two issues which I pursued at great length. One was the possibility of using existing buildings, and the then Chief Minister made it abundantly clear that he would not consider using a building which was owned by the private sector, regardless of whether or not the ownership would ever change, regardless of whether or not it ever would be upgraded—just regardless. And that was very unfortunate, I felt, because what the government did was to say, “There are a lot of possibilities we are just not even going to look at.” And what the Greens are saying with Ms Hunter’s amendment is there are a lot of possibilities and we should look at them. We are likely to get a vastly better outcome by looking at all the options.
I would like to point out to the Liberal Party and the Labor Party that this Assembly has not yet, in fact, made a decision to spend $432 million on a government office building. What we decided to do in the budget a few months ago was spend half a
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