Page 1507 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 4 May 2016
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damages due to the imposition of a law in retrospect; the bill could deter other consortia or businesses from seeking to contract with the territory, reducing competition, with a flow-on loss of value for money in future procurements; and the bill would trash the territory’s commercial reputation, again leading to reduced competition in the marketplace and loss of value for money. And I repeat that the reasons for keeping text confidential are specific, reasonable and comparable to provisions in other legislation like the Freedom of Information Act.
Mr Coe’s bill is not confined to capital metro itself but could also apply to any project “related to light rail”, being any project within one kilometre of the light rail track. So these potential damages to the territory are multiplied.
On a final note, I am sorry to disappoint Mr Coe, but much of the information he is seeking to be published may not be in the contract between the territory and capital metro anyway. As a public-private partnership, there are numerous contractual relationships that do not involve the territory at all. As such, they are not governed by the Government Procurement Act, and therefore these contracts will not be published.
On the face of it, Mr Coe’s bill might appear to some to be fairly inoffensive and to be limited in its effects, being apparently targeted at a single project. However, the opposite is, in fact, true. This bill, if it were passed, would set an untenable precedent. But even if we could be assured that this type of amendment would never be used again, the ramifications for this single instance are, as I have outlined, potentially far-reaching and place the territory’s reputation and financial standing at significant risk, a risk that Mr Coe appears so cavalier about that he is prepared to take on many different issues of sovereign risk.
It is a risk that the government is not prepared to take. The government will not be supporting this short-sighted and irresponsible bill, just as we will argue vigorously against the dishonouring of the contracts that we will sign this month.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (3.36): The bill proposed by Mr Coe would amend the Government Procurement Act to remove the ability for notifiable contracts to contain confidential aspects. Importantly, it does not seek to do this generally for all government contracts or even for classes of government contracts. Mr Coe has proposed a change to the law to target one contract only for one project only, that is, the ACT’s light rail project.
Confidentiality arises in contracts in various ways. It might be required by the parties to the contract or it might be required by other laws. Some examples include issues of personal privacy or commercial-in-confidence information. There might be legislative obligations for confidentiality, for example, under the Privacy Act. Another example might be in relation to confidential intellectual property or commercially sensitive information contained in a contract.
I have no desire—and members well know this—for information to remain unnecessarily confidential. Members will know that I have, as have the Greens over many years in this place, consistently sought to have information released publicly and to improve transparency of government processes. There are some times when
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