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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 2 Hansard (28 February) . . Page.. 430 ..

MR DE DOMENICO (continuing):

In the ACT, clear contract and service requirements will be specified in the tender documents. That is another difference between the way we do it here and the way they have done it in South Australia.

Let us talk about the contracts as well. The South Australian contract had limited flexibility by restricted competition. Only two companies were spoken to and it was a nine-year term. That is too long. The ACT contract situation will be a flexible contract arrangement with either a single contractor or managed subcontractor arrangements, and the term at this stage will be three years. Once again, it is totally different. I have read out all that stuff, Mr Speaker, to show the difference between the South Australian scenario and the ACT scenario. Just because a particular Liberal government does it a particular way does not mean that everybody else follows suit. We do not happen to agree with the South Australian way of doing things. It might work for South Australia, and it probably has not, but it is different from what is going to happen in the ACT.

There are some other things we have said in this debate. What was not realised is that unions have been consulted. I stress again that at 2.30 pm, just before we were talking, they were meeting on this very issue. The tender will specify as much as possible the use of local products and services. That is right there in writing, in black and white. There can be an in-house bid by the current staff. That did not happen in South Australia either, or in Victoria or anywhere else. That is going to happen here in the ACT.

Some of the report, as Mrs Carnell said, the part that is not commercial-in-confidence, will be made available to interested parties. People should not frown at that because this is all about commercial-in-confidence. We should not be compromising any internal bid by letting loose willy-nilly anything that people want to know about. Commercial-in-confidence is the very essence of the way these things will work or not work.

Once again, Ms Tucker made some pertinent comments. She talked about the purchaser-provider concept and suggested that perhaps she is not in accord with that. She also hinted that the purchaser-provider concept is something that has been invented by the Carnell Government. I have to say to Ms Tucker that it is not just this Government that believes in the purchaser-provider concept. I think all sensible governments of all political persuasions are working on that very concept. The one that comes to mind quite readily, Mr Speaker, is the Federal Labor Government, which I think pioneered and championed the cause of purchaser-provider.

We are also talking negatively and trying to attack the situation before we have given it a chance to work or before we have been given a chance to know anything about it. Ms Tucker also made a comparison with McDonald's, which I thought was a bit crass really. She compared IT and the way that works and outsourcing with McDonald's.

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