Page 480 - Week 02 - Thursday, 14 May 1992
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When the matter got to the Estimates Committee - and Mr Cornwell referred to that - a question was asked about a consultancy that had been identified. Mr Templar, the Commissioner of the ACT Housing Trust, advised the Estimates Committee on 27 September that that person would not be continuing with the consultancy; that a new consultancy would need to be undertaken. Mr Moore, in fact, then declared an interest in this because he was a director and took no further part in the proceedings. Mr Templar said:
The consultant had to withdraw because of ill-health. We are in the process of re-letting that consultancy to somebody else. We have not done that yet.
So, around about that time, September, the consultant withdrew. Again Mr Cornwell was right in saying that I wrote to people saying that it was my intention to proceed with this consultancy. I am always a little sceptical about consultancies, and I think you would all agree that that is sensible. Governments are here to govern, not always to be setting up consultancies and having inquiries. To get political for a moment, a moment only, I point out that there was an interjection earlier on in response to a government answer. I think Mr Berry made some reference to inquiries and there was some scoffing from opposition benches to the effect, "You should not be having inquiries".
I think that generally we should be wary about consultancies, but I was prepared still to continue with the consultancy. There was toing-and-froing about who was to do it, who would be sufficiently independent. The original consultant was regarded by all sides as acceptable. There were difficulties in working out somebody else who was acceptable. It got to the end of the year; it got to January. There was always going to be a SAAP review coming up in the middle of this year, around June-July, and I formed the view in January that I was not going to go through a process of selecting a tender and letting a contract for a consultant inquiry in March-April-May at considerable cost, followed by a SAAP review.
Mr Cornwell said that this became apparent. It became apparent because the Housing Trust wrote to a number of people, and I have written to a number of people. Whenever anyone has written to me about this, this is the response they have been getting since January. It is that I decided in early January not to proceed with an independent consultancy but to have a SAAP review which could be expanded to provide a forum to agitate these issues. That is my current intention. The SAAP review process could be described as internal.
There is another allegation which somewhat muddies the waters. It is true that the person who holds the chair's position did, some years ago, actually write the SAAP review document. That leads to all sorts of allegations, but that does not mean that he would do the review. I would like to table the SAAP review document because the review is a quite complex process. There are something like 45 pages in the ACT service review manual with 10 or 11 matters detailed on each page - so there are some hundreds of matters - setting out issues that are to be addressed in the process of a SAAP review.
A SAAP review can be a process of some rigour. It is a process which is designed, essentially, to ensure that the service is delivering outcomes that are acceptable. It is correct that there should be such reviews because, as Mr Cornwell said, significant public dollars go into these processes. I table the final version of the ACT SAAP service review manual.
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