Page 2614 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 24 August 1993
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I have a couple of observations of my own. I think in some cases there was a sloppiness in terms of the production of the paperwork. There were no huge errors of calculation or judgment in terms of the project in question, but there was a certain sloppiness, a certain laziness. I think the officers concerned in the bureaucracy and in the administration, having had the errors drawn to their attention, will understand that when the committee says that it wants information at a certain level there is no excuse for that sort of incidental error. I am fairly optimistic that we will not see that sort of thing next year.
The level of consideration given by the committee to the projects concerned, I think, was incredibly high. Whilst the other members who have already spoken have paid tribute to the secretary of the committee, which I absolutely and fully endorse, I would also like to thank not only the chairman, Mr Lamont, but my colleagues on the committee. I think the words that Mr Kaine used tonight were that it is an easy process for a committee to come up with a report like this. I am not disagreeing in any way with that, but I tend to think that it is not really easy. It is really a case of the people on the committee being dedicated to what they are there to do, giving themselves and each other a very high level of understanding of the job in front of them, and instilling a level of cooperation that I think a lot of other people within the community could learn from. Never, really, do we always get, as individuals, precisely and absolutely what we want with no concession to anyone else.
I think some members of the community who give evidence to our PDI Committee could take a little bit of a learning leaf out of the book of the committee, because not all of us always get what we want either; but we certainly understand each other's position, and take very seriously the level of cooperation that is required to come up with a report like this. I think the lesson for each of us on the committee, having done it, is that we can continue to do it. More importantly, other people can look at the difficulties we faced while still managing to come up with a report about which we all feel happy. I think that in itself is a bit of a lesson.
The process of a project in the capital works program from beginning to end was another aspect of our inquiry which I think gave us a few lessons to learn. I think parts of the administration could learn from it also. An important factor is the time at which Public Works gets involved in a project. I think the rest of the committee would agree that, given a little more careful timing and a little more consideration of the end product, any client - when I say "client" I mean any part of the administration seeking completion of a project - should seek information, cooperation and input from Public Works at an earlier stage. I suggest that that should happen at the very beginning. Then a lot of the problems that we unearthed and that show up in this report will start to disappear. A lot of the suggestions in the recommendations already have been implemented to some degree by Public Works. That in itself is why we feel very strongly that some of those clients should go to Public Works a bit earlier.
Again my thanks go to the committee secretary, Mr Rod Power, but not only because he was such a help in compiling this report. As a member of the committee, each time another pile of papers arrived on my desk I felt slightly overwhelmed by the amount of time required to go through it; but he had to sift through that material at a level that I would not like to have to do and to dispense it to us. I may have had to read it once, but he had to sort it out several times
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