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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 4 Hansard (20 April) . . Page.. 951 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

What this report says, as the same report said last year, again unanimously, is that the commitment to a pool for the Belconnen community should proceed, as the Government committed at the last election. That is what the report says. It is the second time the report has said it and my chairman, unfortunately, cannot attempt to represent it as something else. It is quite clear and unambiguous.

Another recommendation that I want to draw the Assembly's attention to is in relation to the Ainslie Public School and the refurbishment of the old Ainslie Public School for a craft centre. The committee was very concerned to learn that the Government was proposing to spend somewhere between $150,000 and $250,000, depending on which figures you put together - I was a little unclear as to how you could do that, but it is a figure in that range - with absolutely no feasibility study or business case in place. None whatsoever. That is a fairly serious indictment of a breakdown in procedures in the Chief Minister's Department and in the areas responsible for that proposition. It proves the worth of the capital works process in the Urban Services Committee that we were able to identify that and say, quite clearly, that that project should not proceed. Not a cent of money should be spent on that conversion until the Government is able to produce a feasibility study and business case which justifies the proposal.

We have to think about this, Mr Speaker, in light of some of the other things that have been missed out in this capital works program. We have to think about the contrast between that and other proposals, and I point out to members the proposal for an upgrade of the technology area at Hawker College. We received evidence from the school board of Hawker College and the P&C Association saying that they understood that they had a commitment from the Government at the last election to upgrade the technology area. Indeed, they were told it was not just a promise; it was more than that. It was more than that because it was locked into the capital works program. A Liberal candidate, Mr Birtles, said that during the last election campaign. So, they were very disappointed to learn that in the second budget after the last election they still have not got the money for the upgrade of their technology area.

On the one hand we have a government that is prepared to spend a quarter of a million dollars upgrading a school building for which it has done no feasibility study or business case, and on the other hand you have a desperately needed and required upgrade of technology areas at a secondary college which goes wanting for the second year in a row. I think that is a very valuable example of how scrutiny of the capital works budget by this committee can address those sorts of discrepancies.

Mr Speaker, the committee was also concerned at some process issues to deal with the capital works program and how it was assessed. It became quite clear to the committee that the Government was rapidly losing the expertise available to it to make the detailed technical assessments of the technical and cost aspects of the proposed capital works. Because of the Government's policies with outsourcing, it is quite clear that we are rapidly running out of qualified officers within government departments, notably the Department of Urban Services, to make an appropriate assessment as to the cost and technical aspects of the proposed capital works projects.

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