Page 602 - Week 02 - Thursday, 16 February 2017

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The agreement will also see us work together to jointly bid under the federal government’s smart cities and suburbs program and through the development of respective city deals for Canberra and Adelaide.

MS CODY: Chief Minister, what steps have you taken to secure additional direct flights between Canberra and Adelaide?

MR BARR: We have had very productive discussions with the Premier, the Treasurer and the Chief Executive of the South Australian Tourism Commission about aviation and tourism partnership opportunities between the ACT and South Australia. The Premier has agreed to advocate with me for new low-cost services between Canberra and Adelaide and to increase the current capacity and services with the existing airlines. I have written to the Premier to formalise our commitment to advocate for additional flights.

I note that I undertook a similar process with the Victorian Premier prior to Tigerair services between Melbourne and Canberra being established last December. This was, of course, the first time in quite a while that we had a low-cost carrier servicing Canberra and the region on a daily basis. With those services and infrastructure now operational, there is a greater opportunity to work with Tigerair but also with Jetstar to develop additional services to other cities in Australia.

The new or additional services between Canberra and Adelaide will be supported by cooperative marketing partnerships between Visit Canberra and the South Australian Tourism Commission to promote each city’s tourism experiences to encourage greater visitation between South Australians and people from the ACT.

ACT Land Development Agency

MS LE COUTEUR: My question is to the Chief Minister and relates to his power to request investigations by the Public Sector Standards Commissioner into misconduct under the Public Sector Management Act. Chief Minister, why have you not used your power under the Public Sector Management Act to request that the Public Sector Standards Commissioner investigate the apparent serious misconduct by Land Development Agency officials—specifically LDA officials’ manipulation of official records—in response to a freedom of information request lodged by Mr Coe on 15 November 2016?

MR BARR: The first point to make in response to Ms Le Couteur is that no allegations of misconduct or improper behaviour have been made against any officers. The Auditor-General’s report was very clear on that. The Auditor-General found, and I quote, “transparency, accountability and rigour in processes had been lacking in certain circumstances”, but there were no allegations of misconduct or improper behaviour made against any officers.

In relation to the specific issue of the FOI document, on 15 December 2015 it was discovered that a document released in response to a freedom of information request differed from the document originally received by the LDA. The difference was two


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