Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 8 Hansard (28 August) . . Page.. 2662 ..

MRS CARNELL (Chief Minister and Treasurer) (5.38), in reply: Mr Speaker, I thank members for their support. Fairly obviously, Mr Berry has changed his position. That is probably why he left. On 6 June or 6 July, something like that, Mr Berry indicated that this whole proposal was full of holes and was not up to much. I think they were his exact words. I am pleased that since then he has seen the light.

Mr Speaker, I think we would all agree that there is a great problem with the way the Federal Government is outsourcing at the moment. I have to say it is true that I do not have a problem, and nor does the Liberal Party, with sensible, well-structured outsourcing. We believe strongly that it is the role of government to ensure that services are provided at the best value and cost to taxpayers. It is true; we believe that. Tar us with the same brush, and so be it. What we do not believe, though, is that outsourcing should be carried out in such a way as to cut out the small to medium players. We think that is a great policy problem for the Federal Government, and it is certainly causing a problem for Canberra. It is not the policy we disagree with; it is the way they are doing it. That is a huge problem in Canberra.

Rather than whinge about it, like those opposite do, we decided to go down a path that would address the problem, knowing that we cannot change the way the Federal Government is outsourcing. We have tried very hard, and I know that many people are working very hard to achieve that, and, hopefully, I think the Commonwealth is starting to see the light a bit. Rather than just sit back and whinge, we decided to come up with a proposal that could help those small to medium companies in Canberra and the region to be able to pick up some of the Commonwealth Government outsourcing. Under normal circumstances the contracts are too big, or, alternatively, the risk profile and the capacity of those companies to underwrite their bids simply is not good enough, taking into account that they are too small. CanDeliver achieves that end.

We will certainly be doing everything we can to ensure that CanDeliver does succeed in the future. We will certainly be doing everything we can to ensure that the bids improve as time goes on. I think the first bid was a very good one, Mr Speaker. Possibly what happened with the Commonwealth is that it was such an innovative idea that they could not cope with it. They seemed to have a lot of trouble understanding that this could be a good way forward for the Commonwealth and for ACT businesses, but we will spend a bit of time trying to sort that out.

Looking at the fact that this Territory-owned corporation will now go ahead, I would like to express my thanks to those people who got the first Finance bid in in a very short period of time. Ms Tucker's view was that until we had the debate in this place and the Bill had gone through we could not put in any bids. We did not get Finance, but I think it was important that we put in the bid. We certainly would not have been able to put in the Administrative Services bid that has already gone. I do not think that would have been a good approach at all. The interim board, chaired by David Lamont, has been part of putting these bids together. The board is doing an extremely good job in ensuring that CanDeliver is competitive, is out there and is representing the views and wishes of small to medium businesses in the ACT and the surrounding region. If we could get more Labor Party people like David Lamont with a positive view about Canberra, a view that does support small businesses, I am sure we would not have some of the problems that we have in this place right now.

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .