Page 1057 - Week 04 - Thursday, 21 May 2020
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ACT legislation on these matters, in contrast to, for example, the commonwealth. The report includes recommendations that this be addressed. In this case, in the absence of such guidance, the economic development directorate negotiated and entered into contracts as if they were a private rather than a public entity, with negative effects on openness, transparency, and accountability.
There are a number of other recommendations in this report. Because there are matters beyond the committee’s capacity to adjudicate, and because the committee has not been able to establish the truth in every instance, one recommendation is that the ACT Integrity Commission inquire into the sale.
There are a number of things which are quite disturbing about this report. As I have said, the main thing is the bureaucratic failure of record keeping and to follow procedures. To depart so significantly from what was set out in the request for tender, and the sudden onset of a land swap without government approval—and, in fact, you could say, in the face of government disapproval—shows that there are many aspects of this sale which are entirely problematic.
It has been a difficult process. There was also a complaint against the Auditor-General which the committee had to deal with. I will speak about that on the next report that I table, but it has to be put in this context as well. This was an extraordinarily complex process. There was a lot of evidence. There was a lot of conflicting evidence. Without a proper paper trail it is very hard to get to the real truth of the matter.
It has also been a tortuous process to negotiate the finalisation of this report. I think that as a chair I am a pretty accommodating person when it comes to trying to get a consensual report. I take particular pride in having reports where people do not feel the need to have dissenting comments. It is the right of members to have dissenting comments if they do not feel that their issues are being accommodated. However, this report would have been available probably a fortnight or three weeks ago, had it not been for the fact that I was asked to make substantial changes to accommodate the wishes of some members of this committee.
I went into that process in good faith. There was considerable work done by me and other members of the committee to bring together what I thought was a report where the majority of members could agree to the majority of what was there. One member, Ms Cody, had made it clear that she had serious concerns about the inquiry from the outset. She had at one stage expressed a desire to dissent entirely from the report. We negotiated that. Ms Cody has made some dissenting comments, which I have not had a chance to read as yet. I will not comment on those, only to say that they are there. But it was very disappointing to find that when it came to the final moment, literally the final moment, the Labor members put their partisan shirts back on.
John Hargreaves used to say that when you are on committees you are not a politician; you are a parliamentarian and you leave your political affiliations at the door. I thought we were doing that. It was very disappointing, at the eleventh hour, to find that the Labor members of the committee basically got back into lock step and took the view that if one person was dissenting from one thing then they both had to.
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