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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 13 Hansard (3 December) . . Page.. 4451 ..

MR WHITECROSS: My question is to the Chief Minister. Chief Minister, on Monday you gave what you styled as the "Canberra into the twenty-first century" address, where you promised something new some time later but not on Monday. In that address you said that, thanks to the strategic planning undertaken by InTACT with regard to outsourcing of ACT Government IT services, 90 per cent of those services had gone to local companies. I refer you to the article in Monday's Canberra Times which states:

Telstra walked away with the communications network, Fujitsu won the mid-range deal and last week GE ... was awarded the contract for desktop PCs and associated software.

How do you reconcile these facts about what happened with the InTACT outsourcing contract with your claim that 90 per cent of those services had gone to local companies?

MRS CARNELL: It is hard to believe, is it not, that sometimes the Canberra Times is wrong? I know that this is a very big leap of faith for us all to handle. What I was talking about in that speech, as Mr Whitecross was aware, was the desktop and applications contract that has recently been let, which is the basis of the school computers, which is how that speech reads. The way that we are funding the very exciting announcement that Mr Stefaniak will make later this week, and the computers for teachers that we have already announced, were as a result of the tendering process that we have just embarked upon.

As I understand it, the way that the strategic partnership actually worked with regard to the GE consortium tender was that we are strategic partnering with GE; GE then have partnerships with a quite large number of local companies in the ACT; and those local companies are providing something like 90 per cent of all of the goods and services that will run via that strategic partnership. Mr Speaker, the sorts of companies that we are talking about are Wizard, Select, CES, I think Aspect, Aulich and Co., CIT, NCSS - there is a quite long list, and I am very happy to provide that information on the companies that are strategic partners to the GE consortium. But my understanding is that 90 per cent of those goods and services will be provided by local companies.

As well, we have already been able to announce that over the next couple of years, and starting very definitely next year, all full-time teachers in the ACT will have access to their own computer, whether they choose to have it at home or at school. Mr Stefaniak will be making some exciting announcements with regard to the further expansion of our information technology approach to schoolchildren. There you have, Mr Speaker, an approach that will significantly improve education in the ACT; that will really put Canberra at the forefront of information technology in Australia, something that is a really big job creator and, most importantly, is funded. We did not even have to use the cash in bank. What a perfect policy outcome!

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