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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1995 Week 8 Hansard (26 October) . . Page.. 2097 ..

MR CONNOLLY (continuing):

The Liberal Party is fond of attacking members of the Labor Party, saying that we do not understand anything about business because we tend not to come from business backgrounds to the same extent. However, even our limited understanding of business is that people are in business to make a legitimate profit, and that is a perfectly good thing too. That is why, when the Government seeks bids for the supply of goods and services, you have an expectation that people will be bidding for the supply of those goods and services in such a way that the company that they are involved in or that they run will make a profit. There is nothing wrong with making a profit. We expect that a company that is providing services will have to pay its employees, pay its superannuation, pay its outgoings, and have something left at the end of the day to put some food on the table. We found it a little odd, and I would have expected this Government to have found it a little odd, when there was a tender process for the disposal of some $3m worth of public assets and the winning bid, the cheapest bid, was from a company that would do it for nothing, for a donation to charity, particularly when there is another bid from a large firm of auctioneers which had a one per cent buyers premium.

I will not get into the argument as to whether it was within or without the contract documents. As Mr Whitecross has shown, the terms of the tender were very murky indeed and were on a shoddy little piece of paper which was faxed out. Again it would have to be common ground that a one per cent buyers premium is not out of the bounds of market practice for this sort of process. What we have is one leading player in the market saying that the right remuneration for this - not a fee to the Government because it is a buyers premium, but what you expect a commercial player in this market to be looking to earn out of providing services - is in the order of $20,000. Mr De Domenico says that there is nothing at all peculiar when a company, regardless of the fact that it is associated with a government member, offers to do it for nothing.

If I had got briefs from my department saying that the tender had been won by somebody who was doing it for nothing, I would have scratched my head and raised some serious questions. That is not normal commercial practice. When that winning company is associated with a member of this place, when the outcome is that the remuneration is a donation to charity, specified to be in the name of the company, which is the name of the MLA - the business name is owned by the MLA and is widely associated in the public domain with that MLA - that is when the ethical alarm bells should have gone off opposite. That is the attack that we make on this Government. We are saying that this is a serious breach of ethical standards. It is a conflict of interest, we say. Even being most charitable, it is a significant lapse of ethical standards.

We had very little defence of that attack from the Leader of the Opposition. We had some statements from Mr De Domenico saying that it was not a conflict of interest because Mr Hird did not get any inside running. People in the business community are expressing real concerns about how a company associated with a member of parliament who is on a public salary is able to do a major job for nothing, whereas - and you put it - another leading commercial player says that the expected remuneration is in the order of $20,000. We say that that does show a level of inside running. Even if it did not, Mr Speaker, even if it was a straight commercial deal and there was no question that the price that was paid for this contract was the correct market price, and even if there is no question of any advantage to Mr Hird, it is still a conflict of interest.

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