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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 2 Hansard (28 February) . . Page.. 423 ..

MS TUCKER (4.00): Mr Moore has raised a number of important issues in this MPI. I am quite happy to talk on this matter also because it is something we have been looking at. As Mr Moore said, the possibility that a contract is given to one company is quite alarming. I listened to what Mrs Carnell said, and there were some reassurances there. But it is very important that we have a good public discussion on these sorts of issues because it is not just about information technology; it is about a lot of areas of government service that are now going to be outsourced with the purchaser-provider model that this Government supports.

In South Australia, while there were some differences in the situation, the concerns were similar in a lot of areas. The aspect of commercial-in-confidence is definitely a concern in the whole purchaser-provider model because we can see how it can be applied to areas that would have been very open and transparent - or, if they were not, they should have been - and processes could have been brought in to make them more so within the government service. We are seeing in South Australia right now a battle about whether the contract can be looked at, even by a parliamentary committee.

I was interested to read in the Canberra Times that there is too much diversity in equipment. It is interesting that we have too much diversity, because when I talked to a couple of people who are in the computing business and in the information technology business, one of them laughed when he read that. He said, "What you are saying is that computers cannot talk to each other. People do not want to talk to each other, and do not take these claims too seriously". We are seeing this in all the reports that are coming out from various agency reviews now. There is a major problem with interagency communication. This is not just to do with technology; this is to do with the culture within the Public Service. I think you have to be careful about making too much of the technology not being adaptable to more interaction.

Diversity is healthy. Diversity leads to innovation. People are so excited about the Internet because there are all sorts of developments occurring now within the technology area as a result of that unfettered development of the Internet. If we are going to be looking at centralising business initiatives, there is a danger that we are going to lose the very creative, innovative sort of culture that this Government, and I would assume all members of this place, would want to support. There is a danger if you have one company coming in with a basic concept. If you like, you could compare it to McDonald's. There is the concept. It is a centralised concept. It is about uniformity. That is where you have to be very careful when you are centralising any kind of business activity. We have to be careful when we talk about too much diversity, because my understanding is that it is not such a problem as we are being led to believe by some people in the area.

The quality of local versus multinational or national companies in terms of service is another issue that has already been mentioned. Being locally responsive is very important. We can see it in other areas where people are working with multinational companies and they are not accountable. They are not nearly as accountable as a local business.

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