Page 3825 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 16 October 1991
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Purchasing Policy
MR STEFANIAK: My question is to the Minister for Urban Services. I remind the Minister of one of the campaigns his Government supports, the Canberra Region campaign. I also refer him to a pamphlet, "What and Where to Recycle in the ACT", which bears his smiling face on page 2, with a little message from him. In the light of the Canberra Region campaign, which supports the Canberra region, why was this publication printed by Westonprint in Kiama?
Mrs Nolan: You should have come to the Estimates Committee and you would have got the answer.
MR CONNOLLY: You should have come to the Estimates Committee and you would have got the answer.
Mr Stefaniak: Which one of you is the Minister? You can give us the answer now, Mr Connolly. I am sure some of these people were not at the Estimates Committee.
MR CONNOLLY: Mrs Nolan expresses it better than I could. This issue was gone into in some depth at the Estimates Committee. There is a threshold question of where the region is, and Kiama is not that far away. The basic answer, which I think most members are aware of, but perhaps Mr Stefaniak is not, is that it is simply not open to this Government, nor was it to the former Government, to adopt a strict only-buy-local policy. We are, as the ACT Government, a signatory to a national agreement which prohibits preference in government purchasing.
The advice I get, and I presume that Mr Duby would have been given similar advice when he was Minister, is that the ACT actually benefits from that provision which prohibits preference. A lot of companies in the ACT and the region do very well from Commonwealth purchasing. If we did not have that policy, Commonwealth Ministers of whatever political persuasion would tend to want to purchase in their electorates. We do well out of that. We also get New South Wales Government work and other State government work done here.
It is simply not open to any government to adopt a strict only-buy-local policy. I noticed in Business Eye some months ago that the small business spokesperson for the rapidly diminishing Liberal Party - one of the candidates for the next election - actually said, "We will buy local". That indicates again the abysmal lack of knowledge of basic government structures sometimes demonstrated by this Liberal Party. Mrs Nolan nods, quite properly. The information was given very clearly.
Mr Kaine: It was a member of the Canberra Unity Party who said that.
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