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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 13 Hansard (2 December) . . Page.. 4248 ..

MR WHITECROSS (continuing):

community understands what objectives we are trying to achieve. Further evaluation of this scheme in the next Assembly will ensure that we can make further progress in refining industry assistance arrangements to ensure that they provide the best outcomes for the Territory.

As I said earlier, a disappointing aspect of this inquiry was the inability of the committee fully to evaluate the effectiveness of the scheme. But one statistic that it is interesting to note is that, of the six firms provided with assistance under the industry assistance package with a promise of 95 jobs, the outcome at the moment is about 14 full-time jobs. It is important, if industry assistance is to be credible, that governments do not make exaggerated and inflated claims about the number of jobs created under these arrangements and that they provide a realistic assessment; otherwise the community will make false assessments of the value for money they are getting from the schemes. That is why we need a committee of inquiry which is able to deal with confidential information in an appropriate way, a way this committee was unable to achieve in the time available because of the view of the department.

In closing, I should make reference to one other thing in Mrs Littlewood's dissenting report. Mrs Littlewood, in her dissenting report, said that the committee was twice offered access to sensitive information about administrative procedures and the conduct of due diligence exercises, but declined. Mr Speaker, the fact is that what the committee was offered was the opportunity to view a file of the department's choosing - not to be given the file, but for the secretary of the committee to view the file. It was to be a file of the department's choosing. When it was put to the department that we should be able to select our own files, it was suggested that that would not be possible. So, I do not think it is at all accurate for Mrs Littlewood to say, as she has here, that the committee was offered access to sensitive information; it simply was not. I should say, with due respect to the department, that at some stages the department did present an apparent willingness to provide information on a confidential basis; but, after going away and, presumably, consulting with the Minister, that information was not provided. Certainly, when the chief executive left the committee, I had a very different impression of the chief executive's willingness to provide information on a confidential basis.

Mr Speaker, I commend the report to the Assembly. Within the constraints that I have discussed, I think it provides some useful suggestions about ways that the industry assistance arrangements can be refined and it provides a way to proceed so that we can make further improvements in the future.

MRS LITTLEWOOD (11.44): Mr Speaker, I cannot commend all of the report, as Mr Whitecross has done, for a number of reasons. Probably one of the major things that concerned me from the outset of this inquiry was the lack of understanding by some members of the committee with regard to management or, in fact, business. I think that is rather sad for this community, because if this community is to survive - I am sure that it will; the private sector is in the process of doing some wonderful things - then it must be supported by government. I really think that in doing that there has to be an understanding of what business is and how it operates. Unfortunately, that certainly did not come through in this inquiry from some of my colleagues on the committee.

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