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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 8 Hansard (28 August) . . Page.. 2617 ..

MR WHITECROSS: The article was in relation to the failure of CanDeliver to be short-listed as a service provider to the Department of Finance. Chief Minister, can you inform the Assembly what criteria CanDeliver failed to meet, which led the Department of Finance to exclude CanDeliver from the short list of preferred service providers?

MRS CARNELL: I cannot give you the actual criteria on which CanDeliver failed. My understanding is that in the debrief it was indicated in very basic sorts of terms that CanDeliver, for whatever reason, had not met the criteria that Finance wanted at the time; but, Mr Speaker, we are not giving up. We are very disappointed, I have to say, because we went ahead with CanDeliver on the basis of making sure - - -

Mr Wood: Mr Howard's economic policies in operation. That is it. His economic policies in operation.

MR SPEAKER: Silence! You are not answering the question, Mr Wood.

MRS CARNELL: We went ahead with CanDeliver to try to do as much as possible, or to do everything we could, to ensure that many small businesses in the ACT and region had an opportunity to be part of Commonwealth Government outsourcing. The Finance outsource that we hoped would be the first opportunity for CanDeliver and the smaller ACT and region businesses to have a go, shall we say, has not been successful; but already, Mr Speaker, we have been part of another tender. I think it is the Administrative Services tender. Again, all I can say is that we are disappointed. There are some Canberra firms on the short list for the Finance outsource. We will be in there and we will continue to try.

MR WHITECROSS: I have a supplementary question. I do not know where to begin, Mr Speaker. Chief Minister, how can you continue to try and hope to do better if you do not even know why you were not included on the short list for the Department of Finance? Can you inform the Assembly what action you propose to take to address the obvious problem facing CanDeliver's ability to competitively tender and win work with Commonwealth departments? Can you give us anything to hang onto to lead us to believe that this is a serious attempt to win work for ACT companies and not just an opportunity to manufacture press releases for you?

MRS CARNELL: The CanDeliver bid, we believe, was very good. Obviously, we are looking at that bid. We are disappointed that we were not short-listed. End of deal, Mr Speaker. I have to say as well that many Canberra companies and other companies were not successful either. I understand that a large number of firms did tender. Obviously, a large number were not successful. We will certainly ensure - - -

Mr Berry: What a great policy to support then - John Howard's policies! Isn't that a good set of policies to support?

MR SPEAKER: Silence!

MRS CARNELL: Mr Speaker, I wonder whether those opposite are trying to tell us that we should not be in there trying to get more work for ACT small business, or are those opposite - - -

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