Page 2383 - Week 11 - Thursday, 2 November 1989
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value, possibly half real value, I do not know. It is a mystery to me.
MR SPEAKER: Order! Mr Collaery, please stick closer to the issue.
MR COLLAERY: Certainly, Mr Speaker. Again, the estimates process is not yet sufficiently tuned - if it ever will be - to gain sufficient value at the hearings on detailed matters of concern to know, by taking specific examples, whether the budget process is sound.
In the report there are some additional comments by me relating to the Housing Trust. Those comments are based on the transcript of the relevant day's evidence, 9 October. At pages 193 seriatim, comments by me and by other members of the committee indicate that we have not yet been supplied with important information relating to just how the process of renovating government homes is carried out.
I do thank the Minister, nevertheless, for arranging for me to go with her officials to see some of these premises, which I did, and I am grateful for that. Nonetheless, I would be very much interested in seeing and knowing why we have to employ commercial management teams to manage projects between the trust and the infrastructure division.
Now, that is becoming fashionable in the construction industry, but certainly it is not normally a feature of government construction contracting, to my knowledge. That needs to be looked at because it adds an additional cost and means that the Government does not have a hands-on role in choosing subcontractors and doing a number of things on site that were formerly the case in this Territory.
Mr Speaker, broadly the estimates process has been useful, but basically it has raised more questions than it has answered, and I believe that we will not get to the bottom of many of these issues until we actually have the files or are in government.
MR STEVENSON (11.23): I agree with Mr Collaery's comments. I believe it could be summed up as "too little time and too little information". We did not have the time to go into the detail that was necessary, and it was basically extremely difficult to go into the matters that we would have liked to because we did not have the information. Even during the Estimates Committee stages, as Mr Collaery mentions, there is still some information that was not fully obtained.
The suggestion is that it is a new government, and that is certainly true, and that perhaps they are learning, like the rest of us, and that is certainly true. But I think, in matters of finance, the full facts do need to be presented to the members of the Assembly so we can ensure correct accountability of the use of taxpayers' money.
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