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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1995 Week 8 Hansard (26 October) . . Page.. 2081 ..

Mr De Domenico: "And we will also pocket $24,000".

MR WHITECROSS: I will get to that, Mr De Domenico. What has the department done, with full approval from the Minister? They have not said, "This is an innovative approach from business, from the industry concerned, as to the best way of doing this auction". They have said, "No; that does not comply with our idea of how it should work". Far from doing what their own purchasing guidelines say, which is utilising industry expertise to assist in identifying an approach that would give value for money, they have instead closed their minds, saying, "No; we have always done it this way. We want to do it this way again. We do not want to think about a new way of doing it. We are going to put your tender in the bin". Mr De Domenico has misrepresented the Hymans tender in the context - - -

Mr De Domenico: I have not seen the Hymans tender.

MR WHITECROSS: While Mr De Domenico is happy to spruik on about $24,000, what Mr De Domenico has not said is that Hymans were going to bear all the costs of the advertising, which was going to be a lot more extensive than the $2,000 the Government spent on this. They were going to bear all the costs of the hall and the wine and the nibblies and all that sort of stuff. They were going to make a donation to charity of about $7,500, which puts the $250 proposed by Harold Hird and Associates in the shade. I do not know whether at the end of the day that was best value for money.

Mr De Domenico: The department said that it was not.

MR WHITECROSS: What I do know is that the department did not consider that. The department said, "No; we want a flat rate auction, a flat rate price. This is not a flat rate price. Put it in the bin". Mr De Domenico thinks that is good. Mr De Domenico says, "That is right; forget the purchasing policy. Lowest price is best. Lowest price is the only criterion. Go for it".

That is what we have seen from the tender process. We have seen very poor documentation which does not properly articulate what is needed, even though the purchasing policy says that they should. We have seen a lack of consideration of alternative ways of doing the job, which the purchasing policy says that they should be open to. We see a failure to alert someone wanting to tender for the work to what the department had decided the criteria were, for better or worse. We see a decision by the department, with full support from the Minister, to base their decision purely on lowest price, not on value for money - not to ask for references for the auctioneers, not to ask for experience, not to ask for anything that would indicate that this auction was going to be done in a way that would get the maximum price for these taxi plates. That is what we see in relation to the tender process.

Let us look at how we went in terms of getting value for money. The Government went into this process budgeting $200,000 a plate for the auction. We discussed this quite a bit with the department in the Estimates Committee.

Mr De Domenico: No; $100,000.

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