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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 1 Hansard (20 February) . . Page.. 217 ..

MR WHITECROSS: I have a supplementary question, Mr Speaker. It seems to me that the Minister is suggesting that the calling of tenders was a way of establishing whether or not an enclosed oval was viable. Can the Minister explain why the Gungahlin Development Authority, having established that an enclosed oval was not viable after expressions of interest had been called, did not readvertise for expressions of interest on the basis of a licensed club only? Is the Minister satisfied that the Gungahlin Development Authority notified all interested parties that the conditions of the expressions of interest, that is, that an oval was no longer a requirement of the bid, had changed?

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, I think the misconception in the question Mr Whitecross is asking is that somehow if the Gungahlin Development Authority - having called for tenders and having received, I think, two tenders or two expressions of interest, whatever they were - came to the conclusion that an oval was not a viable component of the proposal, which in those circumstances is how I would interpret Ms McGrath's comment - that is the assumption in Mr Whitecross's question - there, therefore, ought to have been some further public advertising process to ask people again whether this was possible. I do not accept that view at all.

If tender processes are entrusted to statutory authorities - authorities which have received the support, in this case, of all members of the Assembly, including members of the Labor Party in its present form - those authorities have the right to conduct those tender processes as they see fit, up to a certain point. It seems to me that, if they call for expressions of interest or call for formal tenders and two organisations put forward tenders and neither of them could provide an oval in satisfactory circumstances, which I understand was the case, it is entirely reasonable for the Gungahlin Development Authority to - - -

Mr Whitecross: No.

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Whitecross knows better than the Gungahlin Development Authority; I am pleased to see that. But the fact is that the composition of this authority was approved by the Assembly, and the community-based nature was approved by us, as a matter of fact. I think members of the Assembly actually said that it was the community-based nature of this authority that gave it its strength. In the circumstances, that feature or that characteristic gave it the capacity to make an assessment of whether there was any value in opening tenders again.

I have been briefed on the results of the tender process. I understand why the Canberra Raiders were chosen over the Daramalan-Shaw consortium. I would have thought anyone who perused the details of this matter - members opposite are quite entitled to a briefing if they want one - would quickly see that there were very good reasons for rejecting what appeared, on the face of the proposal, to be a much better proposal, the Daramalan-Shaw proposal, and that the board was entirely within its competency to be able to assess those two tenders and assess from those two tenders whether there were any other viable players out there in the ether who might have come forward magically with an oval which neither of the two present tenderers could have provided satisfactorily.

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