Page 2941 - Week 11 - Thursday, 22 October 1992
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MR CONNOLLY: Madam Speaker, what I am trying to say - it should be edifying for Mr Stevenson, because he has not been a member of a government, but common knowledge to members opposite who have been in government - is that preliminary bids by departments are often wildly at odds with the actual cost, particularly when an incoming government is seeking an urgent move to reverse a policy that those public servants were being paid to defend but a few short weeks before.
As I was going to say, let me tell you a story about the Ainslie Transfer Station. When we came into government and I got the first figures for the Ainslie Transfer Station and presented them to the Chief Minister, in much the same way as Mr Wood did with the first figures for Cook and Lyons schools, they would have made your hair fall out. They probably made my hair fall out. They were an extraordinary bid, above and beyond the actual cost of reopening the Ainslie Transfer Station. I do not have it at my fingertips now, but we canvassed it in the Estimates Committee and the final figure was given. The original bid was considerably higher.
Madam Speaker, there is nothing unusual about getting a bid for resources that is significantly above what it should be. Mr Kaine should know that. Mr Kaine has been Treasurer of this Territory and in his dealings with his Ministers I suspect that he took out the red pen and had a good close look at what his Ministers were asking for. If he did not, he should have. His service before entering this Assembly was in financial management, in the Public Service and in the Defence Force. He would know full well that agencies put in overbids at first analysis, and it is the job of managers and it is the job of Ministers to take those bids and pare them down. As Mr Wood said, after getting that first bid, he was toing-and-froing with the Chief Minister, and the Chief Minister was fulfilling her role as Treasurer with a sharp pencil, which she does in relation to all of her Ministers. Mr Wood came back and had another look at it, and there we go. We were funding $164,000 worth of works that were not part of the urgent need to reopen the school. Indeed, as Mr Wood said today, these works have not even taken place. The new boiler, the $24,000, has not happened. A lot of that has not happened. They were padding or inflating of the figures. So, there has simply been no misleading of the house.
What is of concern is this extraordinary document of which Mr Kaine has tabled one page. As Mr Wood indicated, that is not a document that appears on any official file, on the searching that Mr Wood has had undertaken. We would be very interested to know where that document is and where it came from. The legal advice that is referred to there is not on any official file, and that is an extraordinary proposition. It is an extraordinary proposition that it refers to legal advice from a named private solicitor, whose name we need not enter into the debate, because the Government Solicitor is the body responsible for advising Ministers and departments on matters needing legal advice. There are protocols within the Government Solicitor's Office in relation to the circumstances under which a Minister, or an agency, or a departmental head may go outside the Government Solicitor's Office to private counsel. They require approval in most cases by the Secretary of the Attorney-General's Department. That did not apply in this case.
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